Since 2002 Geoffrey Alderman, the leading authority on the Jews of modern Britain, has written the chief "Comment" column for the "Jewish Chronicle", the world's oldest continuously circulating Jewish newspaper. This anthology brings together over a hundred of these contributions, on subjects as diverse as Jewish Orthodoxy, Ultra-Orthodoxy, Non-Orthodoxy, Islamic Judeophobia, and Jewish approaches to politics and sex.

"In The Communal Gadfly, Alderman, professor at the University of Buckingham and author of Modern British Jewry, collects more than a hundred of his weekly columns from the venerable Jewish Chronicle since 2002, ranging widely in topic and tone. Though it represents only one man’s perspective, Alderman’s grab-bag of a book will be appreciated by historians half a century from now who want to establish what issues British Jews deemed worthy of discussion and debate in these years." - Tablet