The Downfall of Abba Hillel Silver and the Foundation of Israel by Ofer Shiff (review)

Abstract

THE DOWNFALL OF ABBA HILLEL SILVER AND THE FOUNDATION OF ISRAEL Ofer Shiff. Modern Jewish History. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014. 289 pp.The career of American Reform rabbi and Zionist leader Abba Hillel Silver (1893-1963) reached its zenith when ascended to the role of senior mediator between the U.S. and Israel in the wake of the Suez Crisis. Not long afterwards, suffered a reversal of fortune when found himself marginalized by leadership of the nascent Israeli state. This study is not the first analysis of Silver's career but it sets itself apart from earlier scholarship by virtue of Ofer Shiff's masterful and seamless weaving of Silver's own words into the fabric of a key argument: that despite the aforementioned setback, Silver never conflated his political defeat with a rejection of his ideological views. Shiff, professor of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University, and former director of the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, has crafted an exceptional biography of a man who played a critical role in the early relationship between the foundation of Israel and the largest constituent of diasporic Jewry.Born in Lithuania, Silver immigrated to the United States as a child in 1902 and his family settled on New York's Lower East Side. He received his rabbinical training at Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College and his doctorate from the University of Cincinnati. Shiff's account begins however, closer to the end of Silver's career with his unexpected 1949 resignation from all official positions within the Zionist movement and return to his rabbinical post at Cleveland's largest reform synagogue, Tifereth Israel. Shiff contends that Silver's decision came, not in a fit of pique, but with a recognition that his view of Jewish statehood ran counter to the goals of Israel's statist-oriented leadership under David Ben-Gurion. Silver viewed the foundation of the State of Israel as a noble way station on the journey toward what saw as the universal and spiritual purpose of the faith, not as an end in itself. In Silver's vision, this true purpose was to manifest in the creation of successful relationships between the Jewish Diaspora and non-Jewish host societies. Ultimately, he regarded the post-independence period as one destined to liberate Jewry from the defensive mentality of a people forced incessantly to fight for its very existence. Despite his commitment to such an approach, however, Silver ran headlong into the very existential angst for Israel and the Jewish people that strove to prevent. …