About the Author

Zvi Gitelman is a professor of comparative politics and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan. He is also a research scientist at the University's Center for Russian and East European Studies. He has written or edited numerous works on the Jews of eastern Europe, including Jewish Life After the USSR and A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union.

Reviews

"A provocative and important volume. The book elucidate[s] how the definition of the Jewish people has evolved over the centuries and has changed at different times in different places. Highly recommended."
*Choice*

"We live in an age not only of fluid identities and shifting identities, but of contested identities as well. This extraordinary collection of eminently readable scholarly articles spans centuries of Jewish life, and offers an insightful, stimulating and provocative look at Jews' ongoing struggle with defining their identities. Religion? Ethnicity? Both? Neither? The answers, as we learn, depend not only on whom you ask—but when and where—and who does the asking."
*author of The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America*

"This extensive array of intensive historical and contemporary analyses of Judaism and Jewishness is a valuable contribution to the understanding of what it means to be Jewish."
*Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Rutgers University*

"This extensive array of intensive historical and contemporary analyses of Judaism and Jewishness is a valuable contribution to the understanding of what it means to be Jewish."
*Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Rutgers University*

"We live in an age not only of fluid identities and shifting identities, but of contested identities as well. This extraordinary collection of eminently readable scholarly articles spans centuries of Jewish life, and offers an insightful, stimulating and provocative look at Jews' ongoing struggle with defining their identities. Religion? Ethnicity? Both? Neither? The answers, as we learn, depend not only on whom you ask—but when and where—and who does the asking."
*author of The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America*

"A provocative and important volume. The book elucidate[s] how the definition of the Jewish people has evolved over the centuries and has changed at different times in different places. Highly recommended."
*Choice*