Max Simon Nordau (1849-1923), born Simon Maximilian Sudfeld, Sudfeld Simon Miksa in Pest, Hungary, was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic. He was a co-founder of the World Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice president of several Zionist congresses. As a social critic, he wrote a number of controversial books, including The Conventional Lies of Our Civilisation (1883) and Paradoxes (1896). His major work Entartung (Degeneration, 1892), is a moralistic attack on so-called degenerate art, as well as a polemic against the effects of a range of the rising social phenomena of the period, such as rapid urbanization and its perceived effects on the human body. Gustav Gottheil (1827-1903) was a Prussian Poland-born American rabbi. Gottheil eventually became one of the most influential, well-known and controversial Reform Jewish leaders of his time. He published Sarah and Sun and Shield (both 1896), a survey of Judaism as he saw it. Essays...