The Individual in History: Essays in Honor of Jehuda Reinharz ed. by Chae Ran Y. Freeze, Sylvia Fuks Fried, and Eugene R. Sheppard (review)

This mammoth festschrift, honoring modern Jewish historian and former president of Brandeis University, Jehuda Reinharz, includes thirty-one essays and covers over five hundred pages. No review can do justice to such a volume’s many virtues, except in a most general way. The scholars invited to participate hail largely from the United States and Israel. Most of them work in the field of Zionist history, some in modern Jewish history and the history of the Middle East, and a few in American Jewish history. The thematic focus on individuals in history, reflecting concerns of Reinharz’s scholarship, especially his magisterial biography of Chaim Weizmann, slants the volume toward ‘‘great men.’’ Three essays examine women. In fact, only twenty percent of the contributors are women. Most articles focus on various Zionist leaders.

The volume is organized into five sections: Ideology and Politics (13–164), the longest section with ten essays; Statecraft (165–268); Intellectual, Social and Cultural Spheres (269–364); Witnessing History (365–446); and In the Academy (447–532), the shortest section with only three essays. Ideology and Politics examines major Zionist figures, such as Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Louis Brandeis, and Stephen Wise, alongside less well-known Zionists such as Jessie Sampter and Me’ir Ya’ari. Many of the essays present synoptic overviews, drawing upon previously published scholarship. However, Aviva Halamish’s article on Ya’ari and Hashomer Hatza’ir and Meir Chazan’s essay on Jessie Sampter and Givat Brenner derive from original research. Both Halamish and Chazan reclaim individuals whose actions and opinions complicate and enrich Zionist narratives. David Ben-Gurion understandably dominates the section on Statecraft, although Asher Susser devotes his contribution to Wasfi al-Tall. Tall was an important leader of Jordan and an architect of ‘‘Black September’’ until his assassination by Palestinian gunmen in 1971. The material in the third section ranges broadly, from a discussion of a Talmudic statement by Moshe Halbertal to a consideration of spatial coherence in relation to sovereignty by Arnold Band. The fourth section on Witnessing History starts off with a fascinating article by Steven Zipperstein on the Kishinev pogrom, comparing the simultaneous reportage by two very different men sent to cover the violence: the Hebrew poet Haim Nachman Bialik and the Irish Republican leader and journalist, Michael Davitt.

But let me begin with the shortest section, ‘‘In the Academy.’’ Two of its three essays consider men at Brandeis University. Stephen Whitfield writes a lively tribute to political scientist and American Studies scholar, Lawrence Fuchs, who spent his entire academic career at Brandeis. Fuchs combined that career with significant stints as a political activist, beginning with work done on behalf of then Senator John F. Kennedy. Whitfield connects Fuchs’s scholarship on the political behavior of American Jews with his own liberal politics and offers a fascinating glimpse into how Fuchs moved seamlessly between academia and activism, taking insights from his experiences in one arena into the other. Whitfield’s colleague, historian David Hackett Fischer, who has also spent his academic career at Brandeis, examines several university presidents, including Reinharz. He writes candidly, based not only on the record but also on his own experiences. Fischer uses his article to try to identify what makes for a successful university president, starting with Abram Sachar, the founding president of Brandeis. Fischer stresses the importance of openness to varied leadership styles and characterizes Reinharz’s seventeen-year tenure as president as transformative. He credits Reinharz with reviving the university during a turbulent era of booms and busts (1994–2010), renewing its founding vision as a Jewish secular nonsectarian university, raising more money than all previous presidents combined, and recruiting a new generation of leaders.

Two of the most surprising and intriguing pieces come from Steven J. Zipperstein and Daniel R. Schwartz. Lest one think that academic politics...