Such con­cerns among Germany’s Jews echoed those of the encom­pass­ing Ger­man pop­u­la­tion after its defeat in World War I and con­se­quent eco­nom­ic and moral decline, accom­pa­nied by a decline in birth rate. Pro­fes­sor Giller­man sees the Jew­ish reju­ve­na­tion effort as at once a sub­set of an emerg­ing Ger­man nation­al agen­da and as a move­ment com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing Jew­ish par­tic­u­lar­i­ty. To be a bio­log­i­cal­ly, social­ly, and eco­nom­i­cal­ly
pro­duc­tive Jew was to be a good Ger­man. How­ev­er, the Jew­ish agen­da had its own nation­al­is­tic (and Zion­ist) com­po­nent as well. A healthy, pro­lif­er­at­ing Jew­ish cit­i­zen­ry was required to insure the trans­mis­sion ofJew­ish val­ues, cul­ture, and identity.

Pro­fes­sor Giller­man strives to define a set of issues and actions intel­lec­tu­al­ly insu­lat­ed from the post-Weimar (Hitler era) sit­u­a­tion. By not suc­cumb­ing to the received wis­dom of under­stand­ing mod­ern Jew­ish-Ger­man his­to­ry as being defined exclu­sive­ly by anti-Semi­tism, Giller­man offers fresh and valu­able perspectives.

While a must for aca­d­e­m­ic libraries and spe­cial­ist schol­ars, opac­i­ties of aca­d­e­m­ic style and lack of nar­ra­tive under­pin­ning hand­i­cap the study’s inter­est and acces­si­bil­i­ty for the gen­er­al read­er. Bib­li­og­ra­phy, index, notes.