No one needs reminding this September that war has been pretty much a constant for Jews since the beginning of the "short" twentieth century, that is, since World War I. Yet each of these wars has involved Jews in very different ways. The First World War saw Jewish soldiers in the various European armies confronting each other, their Jewish identities subordinated to demands for military service by the states to which they owed their citizenship and allegiance. World War II, by contrast, placed Jews as soldiers and civilians squarely on one side after Pearl Harbor -- that of the United Nations or Allies. Jews retained that unanimity through 1948 and Israel's War of Independence, even extending to 1967 and the Six Day War. Since then, however -- especially after the end of the draft in the United States in 1973 -- Jews have often held divergent views on late 20th century wars. Vietnam divided American Jews, still subject to mobilization as soldiers, as did the Yom Kippur War, particularly its aftermath. The first Lebanon War (1982) divided Israeli Jews, whether in uniform or not. These divisions extended to their American Jewish peers, now mostly civilians. By the time of the second Lebanon War (2006), American Jews had wrestled with the Gulf War, not to mention the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. These tensions and rifts, some new and others old, endure today as American Jews contemplate the ongoing Syrian Civil War, as well as the several Gaza Wars.

How did American Jews understand wars as they unfolded? This collection of articles in the Berman Jewish Policy Archive lets readers take the pulse of American Jews in the midst of war. It draws extensively upon articles written for the American Jewish Year Book, complemented by fascinating articles in Jewish social science journals that explore questions of psychology and social health. These pieces immerse readers in Jewish worldviews now many decades old, articulating persuasively pressing concerns of a distant era. Starting in the 1960s the collection includes a raft of short, incisive, and often combative pieces published in Sh'ma. Among the most powerful are a series of hard-hitting essays debating whether issues around the Vietnam war demanded that Jews speak out or whether Jews could legitimately "speak" of a morality of silence. Reading these vigorous debates of the early 1970s can be both illuminating and cautionary: illuminating because it helps one grasp how American Jews understood war less than twenty-five years after the end of the great patriotic Second World War; cautionary because the blind spots, passions, and slanted vision so evident to readers today could probably equally describe many of the articles included with a dateline of 2014.

Finally, one notes a cluster of articles by the brilliant and passionate Zionist, Leonard Fein (z'l) whose work never seems to lose its luster and always bears rereading with pleasure. Reading about war is surely not fun, but this BJPA collection offers other rewards -- most notably insight and historical awareness.

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