BRITAIN’S JEWS IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR

A FASCINATING LOOK INSIDE THE JEWISH COMMUNITY DURING THE GREAT WAR

Authors: Paula Kitching Publisher: Amberley Price: £14.99

Paula Kitching has taken on a monumental task in writing this book. As the author admits in her preface, “It cannot be a complete record of the whole community or a deep assessment of all those involved.” The Jewish community in Britain prior to the outbreak of war was far from a homogenised entity. Instead a variety of different communities with different attitudes to both their own religion and life as British citizens existed.

This diversity means the title of the book is rather misleading, as it can deal only with the experiences of a few individuals or groups. Understanding the Jewish community as a whole would simply be too big a job and, perhaps, ultimately impossible. Adding to the complexity of the task, many of Britain’s Jews were intent on proving their commitment to their country. Out of a community of something like 300,000 people, around 50,000 served in the British armed forces, but the community was split on the issue of Zionism and its call for a Jewish homeland, with many Jewish leaders in Britain favouring cultural assimilation.

Kitching therefore is forced to draw on individual stories, or the histories of particular regiments, to tell her story, with the result being a book that can be engrossing, but which can also seem like a collection of anecdotes rather than one with an overriding point. This itself is perhaps the most important message of the book – the Anglo-jewry, often subject to suspicion and discrimination, was just as much a collection of individuals as any other section of British society during the war.