In this passionate and challenging book, a distinguished historian of Zionism argues that the world of Jewry is coming apart, that the old reality of Jewish nationhood lies shattered, that Israel is increasingly isolated, fated to go its separate way disengaged from Jewish communities in the Diaspora—most especially the Jewish community in the United States.

David Vital traces the roots of this disarray to the revolution—still unfinished—that began with the emancipation of the Jews in France after the Revolution, continued with the movement of Jews out of Europe and the decimation of European Jewry in the Holocaust, and culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel. For the first time in centuries the Jews have emerged as actors in history, with a nation-state of their own, but the political interests of Jews in Israel and of Jews in the Diaspora appear to be irreparably divided. The Jews are no longer a cohesive people, Vital claims; contemporary Jewry is profoundly fractured and dysfunctional, a fact that is nowhere more apparent than in the growing gap between the two largest Jewish communities in the world, the ones in Israel and in the United States.

This incisive book describes the waning of the Jewish nation, in an effort to lay the groundwork for a cool, clear, and more hardheaded view of the future of the Jews. Anyone with a serious interest in contemporary politics, and in the history and problematics of the Jews and Judaism, will find much to consider in this gripping book.