Scenes and Personalities in Anglo-Jewry 1800-2000 (Paperback)

This volume consists of articles by Israel Finestein written over a period of more than fifty years. He was throughout a close observer of the Jewish scene and latterly a prominent participant. These wide-ranging studies graphically present significant features of Jewish public life in Anglo-Jewry or bearing upon that community. They include appraisals of conflicting attitudes within both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the author's contemporary impressions of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, of which he first became a member in 1945, written in 1948-9; his assessments of transformations in priorities during the second half of the 20th century; the role of the Jewish intellectual and biographical studies or character portrayals of leading personalities, including Sir Isaiah Berlin, Sir Arthur Goodhart, Dr Vivian Lipman and Israel Zangwill. Judge Finestein writes as a historian with often personal knowledge of whom and of what he describes. This insightful and readable work, of human interest, is meant for the general reader as much as for the Jewish communal activist or scholar.