"The Imaginary Jew is brilliant and rueful and bitter at the same time. It shows the joint influence of Sartre and Philip Roth—a combination that only Alain Finkielkraut could bring off."—<i>New Yorker</i> "Finkielkraut's profoundly personal account of his struggle with Jewish identity is entertaining, witty and . . . unquestionably insightful."—<i>Jewish Chronicle</i> "Finkielkraut is exciting to read; good to think with. He delivers sharp and smart prose. . . . [A] most compelling book."—<i>Voice Literary Supplement</i>
Finkielkraut decodes the shifts in anti-Semitism at the end of the Cold War, chronicles the impact of Israel's policies on European Jews, opposes arguments both for and against cultural assimilation, reopens questions about Marx and Judaism, and marks the loss of European Jewish culture through catastrophe, ignorance, and cliché. He notes that those who identified with Israel continued the erasure of European Judaism, forgetting the pangs and glories of Yiddish culture and the legacy of the Diaspora.