Jews or Radicals?

Abstract

In the early 1960s, members of the anticommunist Jewish liberal/Left were able to hold universalist and particularist commitments, more or less, in balance: those who saw themselves as Zionists expressed both praise and criticism of Israel, and many walked alongside African Americans in anticolonialist campaigns, including those against South African apartheid. When they spoke of these interracial alliances, American Jews continued to use the language of prophetic Judaism and cite the lessons of the Holocaust. Several large global and American Jewish organizations had passed resolutions against South African apartheid—the World Union for Progressive Judaism (an umbrella organization for Reform, Reconstructionist, Liberal, and Progressive congregations) in 1960, and the American Jewish Congress in 1964. American Jews followed the leadership of African Americans in the Civil Rights movement in these years, and both groups praised Israel’s strong antiapartheid position. Indeed, Black newspapers recorded fear among African Americans that the apartheid regime’s leaders would harm South African Jews, who might suffer reprisals for “Israel’s undisguised and unflagging opposition to South Africa’s brutal segregative practices.”