THIS BOOK deals with the largest and strongest Zionist organization in the Jewish world. I have attempted here to comprehend the essence of this organization and to relate portions of its complex narrative, which spreads out over a hundred years and spans two continents divided by a great geographical and cultural distance.

The book is the culmination of a research project that continued over many years, starting with a doctoral dissertation written at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After completing the dissertation, I substantially expanded the scope of the research and updated it to take account of further developments. In consequence, the current volume is almost double the length of the original text, and also rather different from it. It is also rather different from the book I published in 2008 under the title Nashim tsiyoniot be'amerikah: hadassah utekumat yisra'el (American Women Zionists: Hadassah and the Rebirth of Israel). Although both books originated from the same Hebrew text, the current volume has been extensively adapted for an English-speaking readership and in some areas ranges more widely than the Hebrew book.

A book cannot be written alone. Accompanying the author on her voyage are many ‘contributors’ to whom she owes much, from both a personal and an academic perspective. The publication of this book offers the best opportunity to thank those who have participated in my journey.

In one respect this book is the result of the curiosity about and interest in American Jewry that I began to feel many years before I started my academic research into the subject. The first American Jews of whom I was aware were members of my own family. My late grandmother Regina (Rivka) Katzburg, née Miller, had two brothers who emigrated from Hungary to the United States and practised medicine there. In 1905 the older brother came to the United States and established himself as a dentist. Because of his American citizenship he was able, at a time when very few Jews were being admitted to the United States, to guarantee entry for his younger brother, a young physician who had completed his medical education in Switzerland. At about the same time my grandmother, who did not want to live in the United States, moved from Hungary to Palestine.