The Jewish Contribution to European Integration Sharon Pardo and Hila Zahavi (Eds.). Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020. 196 p. € 92 (hardcover)

Abstract

a volume which is a mosaic of ideas and angles about and around contemporary Europe and European Jewry. Both Israeli political scholars, members of the Contemporary European Studies Ben-Gurion of Negev, selected contributions from different scholars and practitioners of EU politics and Jewish affairs. The viewpoint adopted by the editors is resumed by the twofold assumption that, on the one hand, ‘ Jews were viewed by some as representing Europe ’ s first supranational and multicultural entity ’ (p. 1), depicted as the prototypal model of liberal cosmopolitan Europeanness. On the other hand, however, are Europe ’ s archetypal minority, a primordial otherness in a historically Christian[ized] European society which had eternalized the pejorative label of the so-called ‘ juif errant (the wandering Jew who has the wrong faith and no land). This dual prism, implying an abyssal distance between these two perceptions of Europe − Jewry relations is the challenging debate the volume seeks to disclose.