Wittgenstein was baptized and died as a Catholic, but three of his four grandparents were Jewish, and anti-Semitism in his native Austria and then in Hitler's Europe did not allow him to forget it. In this beautifully written and stimulating book Dr Chatterjee finds all kinds of hitherto unexplored connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and Judaism. He finds his clues mainly in Wittgenstein's correspondence, in remarks collected in the posthumous (1980) Culture and Value and in a volume of diaries published only in 1997. In these sources Wittgenstein unequivocally defines himself as a Jew and identifies himself with a Jewish intellectual tradition. That this is not obvious in either the Tractatus or in Philosophical Investigations Chatterjee attributes to the Concealment which forms part of the subtitle of this book. In part, Chatterjee suggests, the concealment was due to the fact that Wittgenstein thought his message was universal and could only suffer if it were burdened with a sectarian interpretation; but, more importantly, because the cryptic way in which Wittgenstein wrote is "reminiscent of ancient rabbinic scholarship" (p.58): the Written Law which stood in need of oral interpretation. Wittgenstein had written to Bertrand Russell that he could not write a commentary on his lapidary sentences, but could explicate only orally what he had written (p.116) In conversation with a friend, Wittgenstein, rejecting Greek philosophy, described his thoughts as "100% Hebraic" (p.103).

It is not possible in this brief review to adduce the very many thought-provoking parallels which Chatterjee sees between what he sees as the Jewish intellectual tradition and Wittgenstein's major works, the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigation. Some readers might think that many of these may be coincidental rather than the result of the conscious or even unconscious influences on Wittgenstein of the Jewish intellectual tradition (which in itself would, if deliberate, be narrowly defined both by Wittgenstein and Chatterjee as the rabbinic tradition). The connections, suggestive though they are, may be speculative - and in fact for the most part Chatterjee flags them up with appropriately cautious formulations. In any case, what can be more exciting than the juxtaposition of similarities which, whether intentional or coincidental, have previously been overlooked.