Berkowitz was born in Rochester, New York. He earned a bachelor's degree from Hobart College in Geneva, New York, and a master's degree and PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.^[2][3]

Since 2012, Berkowitz has been editor of Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England.^[2][4] Berkowitz has a particular interest in the history of the Jewish involvement in photography.^[5]

• Jews and Photography in Britain (University of Texas Press, 2015)^[4]
• The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality (University of California Press, 2007)^[4]
• The Jewish Self-Image: American and British Perspectives, 1881-1939 (Reaktion Press, 2000) [US edition: The Jewish Self Image in the West (New York University Press, 2000)^[4]
• Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914-1933 (Cambridge University Press, 1997, 2002)^[4]
• Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 1993 and University of North Carolina Press, 1996).^[4]