Originally published in Hebrew in 2006, Glorious, Accursed Europe was written for a Jewish Israeli audience. Although its main objective is to demonstrate how Jews were affected by Europe, it is in many respects a collection of quotes by Jews about Europe. This is a pity, as the authors also set out to use their “Judeocentric point of view” to offer a “unique perspective on the history of Europe and Western culture over the past two hundred years” (p. 7). Instead, Reinharz and Shavit have produced a volume that shows how famous Jews came to embrace, extol, denigrate, and fear “Europe” since the French Revolution. Composed in the shape of a Jewish Bildungsroman, the book ends on a note of advice: Jews today should consider which parts of their “Europeanness” they need to preserve and which they can safely discard.

In the nineteenth century, the authors contend, most Jews believed that progress would prevail, despite the persistence of pogroms, blood libels, and anti-Semitic legislation. Reinharz and Shavit support this view by referring to prominent Jewish men of the period, whom they cite with little concern for time or place. This focus means that we rarely learn why Jews came to appreciate certain aspects of European culture, where geographically their commitment was most developed, and how they differed from those Jews who were the victims of pogroms, blood libels, and anti-Semitic legislation. The authors further argue that Jews were not only optimistic as Jews, but that their confidence owed much to their “European identity.” While they concede that Jewish fealties usually belonged to individual countries, they maintain that something like a European-Jewish way of being emerged. Yet here again the emphasis on intellectual figures makes their case less than convincing, especially when the tension between the pronouncements of a few and the “habitus” (p. 81) of the many is nowhere resolved: however much Europe was on the minds of Jewish poets and philosophers, the unself-conscious adoption of customs and values remained a local, regional, and national affair. Similarly, because they understand “identity” formation as consumption (the “store of values, ideas, and institutions from which one could borrow,” p. 84), the authors are unable to explain how this “European”-Jewish habitus looked, sounded, or felt beyond pronouncements on, say, the importance of freedom or the rule of law.

Jewish optimism, already tested in the fin de siècle, came to an end during the interwar period. The reader is now introduced to a strange teleological reading of German history. Indeed, although Reinharz and Shavit speak of “Europe's enigmatic soul” (p. 120), they are primarily interested in the German case. Early nineteenth-century prophecies of ominous Germanic Romanticism or anti-Western traditions à la Julius Langbehn and Paul de Lagarde typify their interpretation of the German past. This is followed by a cursory chapter on England and France before World War II, whose cultural values Jews juxtaposed favorably against the “declining, disintegrating Western culture” embodied in Germany and eastern Europe. In the final sections of the book, the authors turn to the post-1945 period. On the one hand, Jews from various European countries came together in Palestine/Israel to create a “melting pot” largely oblivious of the lingering Polish, German, or Russian subcultures in the land. What is more, the political decline of Britain and France after 1956 meant that Europe became even less significant to Jewish Israelis, replaced by the United States. On the other hand, anti-Semitism in Europe, particularly in Germany, preoccupied the Israeli public throughout. The authors recount Israeli reactions to the Adenauer government, to negotiations on Wiedergutmachung, and to German reunification. They also mention the rise of Islam in Europe and its impact on the Jewish situation on the continent.

The book's narrative of “Jewish ambivalence” culminates in the statement that Europe remains “glorious and accursed” (p. 196). For the Israeli reader, this conclusion may suggest that a critical approach to the subject implies the recognition that Europe has meant many things to Jews, both good and bad. For this reader, it represents a chutzpah at best and a truism at worst.