Shulamit Reinharz

Immigration policy is one of the hottest political potatoes in the United States today, pitting, as it does, the rights of U.S. laborers to protect their jobs (whether or not there is an immigrant threat to their jobs is debatable) versus the desirability of sustaining the U.S. self-definition as a country that takes in “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” a country in which we were all once immigrants. The legal status of people who arrive in the United States without permission (or without permission to stay) and the legal status of employers who engage these workers fuels another debate. What is to be done? American Israelis: Migration, Transnationalism, and Diasporic Identity does not address these “immigration debates” but rather attempts to describe one particular immigrant group, Israelis. One should not criticize a book for what it does not do, yet I think a major opportunity was lost in not placing Israelis in the larger context of immigration controversies. Doing so might have made clear that the current debate is not about immigration, as much as it is about socio-economic class. In fact, the words “visa” and “illegal” do not appear in the index.

Sandra Lustig and Ian Leveson are European Jews (based, respectively, in
Germany and England) whose edited collection, Turning the Kaleidoscope:
Perspectives on European Jewry, builds on the premise that the world has
changed, particularly the European world. We now have the EU, an international currency, and low barriers between countries. These open borders,
the new common language of English, and the widespread use of Internet
communication have created opportunities for a Jewish revolution of sorts in
Europe. It is time, argue Lustig and Leveson, to assert a new identity, not as a
Czech, German or Swedish Jew, but as a European Jew. Many bold ideas underpin this book. One is that European Jewry can serve
as a bridge between the two Jewish superpowers—Israel and the United States.
Rather than conceiving of these two giants as vacuum cleaners sucking up
all the Jews, we should recognize the existence of vibrant, growing Diaspora
communities, each with unique features. The contributors have another important idea to share: The old organizations are tired and meaningless. Younger
people want—need—to create new Jewish organizations to deal with a new
reality. They see themselves as being outside the mainstream