Product Description

Chaim Weizmann, steeped in the folk culture of the East European shtetl and the humanistic science of Central and Western Europe, was the ambassador of the Jewish people to the English-speaking world. Louis D. Brandeis, on the other hand, was known as the true exponent of Anglo-American civic culture who gave his leadership at a critical moment to the American and world Jewish community. A Clash of Heroes studies the conflict between these two dominant personalities, each of whom has been hailed by devoted followers as the hero of a crucial era in recent Jewish history. Halpern sets the meeting, collaboration, and sharp conflict between these two men against the shifting background of a world at war and the shaky travail of revolution and reconstruction in the early 20th century. Through a comparison of two exemplary figures in Jewish leadership, Halpern paints an enthralling portrait of 20th-century Zionism and illuminates the complex relationships between leaders and the public and between Jewish nationalism and its extended environment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2159742 in Books
• Published on: 1987-09-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
"The most sophisticated and perceptive analysis of the Brandeis-Weizmann conflict to date."--Journal of American History

"Offers incisive portraits of Weizmann and Brandeis and insight into the movement which, at different times, they headed."--Religious Studies Review

"Everyone who studies the Brandeis-Weizmann controversy is left with the feeling that there are still elusive elements in the ultimate understanding of that historical episode. It is Ben Halpern's lasting merit that he has produced the best description and analysis of that issue. He compels us all to reconsider again the primary and secondary significance of that important event in Zionist and in American Jewish history."--Studies in Contemporary Jewry

"Halpern, one of Zionism's foremost historians, puts this clash into new perspective....In careful, well-documented detail, he traces the complex personal and historical factors that underlay this clash and their subsequent implications, especially for American Zionism....An ambitious and sometimes difficult book that can be understood on several levels...it has no parallel in its field."--Choice

"[An] interesting and informative study."--Jewish Chronicle

About the Author
Ben Halpern is at Brandeis University (Emeritus).