especially grateful for the assistance of Dan Polisar, who has by this point
read the book in several drafts and who has made crucial editorial sugges-
tions on a humbling number of occasions. I would also like to thank Hillel
Fradkin, David Hazony, Michael Oren, Joshua Weinstein, and Ken
Weinstein, who read the entire manuscript and offered significant criticism.

In addition, a special contribution was made in 1995 by William Kristol
and John Podhoretz of the Weekly Standard and in 1996 by Neal Kozodoy
of Commentary, who devoted precious time and advice to bringing the first
versions of the materials in this book into print.

This book has required research spanning three continents and several lan-
guages, which was feasible only due to the assistance of an exceptionally capa-
ble research staff. Dina Blank signed on with me as a research assistant more
than four years ago, bringing to the book an arsenal of research talents and
unmatched enthusiasm. Her resourcefulness and devotion have left their im-
print on every page of the book, and on everyone who has worked on the pro-
ject. Evelyne Geurtz headed my research team for three years, applying her
superb critical abilities and judgment to sorting through mountains of raw
historical data, as well as recruiting and supervising the research assistants
working on the project. Lior Ya'akobi, head of the Shalem Center's research
services, has been the team's ace archival researcher, consistently unearthing
historical data in an astonishing array of hardly known archives, long-defunct
publications, and books and manuscripts that are supposed not to exist any-
more. Among the others who contributed their time and expertise to the re-
search effort, special thanks go to Menucha Brand, Miryam Brand, Liat
Hartman-Jachman, Avraham Levitt, Aryeh Mendelovitch, Akiva Mevurach,
and Julie Zimmerman. My assistant Wendy Kagan brought all this together,
fighting unimagined logistical and administrative battles, spending late nights
in transatlantic phone calls, and handling the demands of the outside world so
that I could devote the necessary time to completing the book.

In addition, I would like to thank members of the Shalem community
who have permitted me to make use in this work of research that they con-
ducted under their own auspices: Dina Blank permitted me to use primary
source material from her senior thesis and from a second unpublished paper
written at Columbia, both of them on the role of intellectuals in Israeli pol-
itics. Avraham Levitt allowed me to draw from sections of his paper on the
history of Israeli art, which he wrote as a Shalem Graduate Fellow in
1997-1998, a scaled-down version of which was published later in the cen-
ter's periodical, Azure. And Dan Polisar shared with me materials from his
research on the Israeli educational system, which was sponsored by the Avi
Chai Foundation from 1997 to 1999.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to individuals who have worked to make
sure that this book was all it could be in a market that "everyone" said could

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