The lively essays collected here explore colonial history, culture, and thought as it intersects with Jewish studies. Connecting the Jewish experience with colonialism to mobility and exchange, diaspora, internationalism, racial discrimination, and Zionism, the volume presents the work of Jewish historians who recognize the challenge that colonialism brings to their work and sheds light on the diverse topics that reflect the myriad ways that Jews engaged with empire in modern times. Taken together, these essays reveal the interpretive power of the "Imperial Turn" and present a rethinking of the history of Jews in colonial societies in light of postcolonial critiques and destabilized categories of analysis. A provocative discussion forum about Zionism as colonialism is also included.

1. Ethan Katz, Lisa Leff, Maud Mandel, "Introduction: Engaging Colonial History and Jewish History"

Part I: Subjects and Agents of Empire

2. Colette Zytnicki, "The 'Oriental Jews' of the Maghreb: Re-inventing the North African Jewish Past in the Colonial Era"
3. Susannah Heschel, "The Rise of German Imperialism and the German Jewish Engagement in Islamic Studies"
4. Adam Mendelsohn: "Not the Retiring Kind: Jewish Colonials in England in the mid-19th Century"
5. Frances Malino, "Oriental, Feminist, Orientalist: The New Jewish Woman"
6. Israel Bartal, "Jews in the Crosshairs of Empire: A Franco-Russian Comparison"

Part II: Jews in Colonial Politics

7. Ethan B. Katz: "Crémieux's Children: Joseph Reinach, Léon Blum, and René Cassin as Jews of French Empire
8. Tara Zahra: "Zionism, Emigration, and East European Colonialism"
9. David Feldman: "Zionism and the British Labor Party"
10. Daniel Schroeter: "Vichy in Morocco: The Residency, Mohammed V and his Indigenous Jewish Subjects"
11. Maud Mandel, "The Politics of Street Riots: Anti-Jewish Violence in Tunisia before Decolonization"

Part III: Zionism and Colonialism

12. Derek J. Penslar, "Is Zionism a Colonial Movement?" from Israel in History: the Jewish State in Comparative Perspective. NY: Routledge, 2006. Reprinted with permission.
13. Joshua Cole, "Derek Penslar's 'Algebra of Modernity': How Should We Understand the Relation between Zionism and Colonialism?"
14. Elizabeth F. Thompson, "Moving Zionism to Asia: Texts and Tactics of Colonial Settlement, 1917-1921"
15. Derek J. Penslar, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Colonialism: A Response to Joshua Cole and Elizabeth Thompson"

List of Contributors
Index

Ethan B. Katz is Associate Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati. He is author of The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France and the coeditor of Secularism in Question: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times.

Lisa Moses Leff is Professor of History at American University. She is author of Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France (2006) and The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust (2015).

Maud S. Mandel is Professor of History and Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at Brown University. She is author of In the Aftermath of Genocide: Armenians and Jews in Twentieth-Century France (2003) and Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict (2014).