This book explores the variety of social and political phenomena that combined to the make the
First World War a key turning point in the Jewish experience of the twentieth century. Just
decades after the experience of intense persecution and struggle for recognition that marked
the end of the nineteenth century Jewish men and women across the globe found themselves drawn
into a conflict of unprecedented violence and destruction. The frenzied military social and
cultural mobilisation of European societies between 1914 and 1918 along with the outbreak of
revolution in Russia and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East had a profound
impact on Jewish communities worldwide. The First World War thus constitutes a seminal but
surprisingly under-researched moment in the evolution of modern Jewish history. The essays
gathered together in this ground-breaking volume explore the ways in which Jewish communities
across Europe and the wider world experienced interpreted and remembered the ¿war to end all
wars¿.
