American Jewish Leaders Research Articles

The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel Versus the American Jewish Establishment (review)

Reviewed by: The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel Versus the American Jewish Establishment David M. Reimers The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel Versus the American Jewish Establishment, by Fred A. Lazin. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2005. 356 pp. $34.95. Fred A. Lazin has written an interesting and informative account of how both the United States and Israel responded to the issue of Soviet immigrant Jews. It is a detailed book based on extraordinary research into the archives. This is a story of how Israel dealt with the possibility of receiving Soviet Jews, and in doing so not only had to face the twists and turns of Russian policy but also [End Page 158] had to work with American Jewish leaders and Jewish organizations, which he calls the American Jewish Establishment. The potential Soviet immigrants had several possible destinations and also became part of the politics of the Near East, but the book focuses mainly on how the American Jewish Establishment and Israelis managed to forge a policy of compromise. The interests of the American Jews and the Israeli government were not always the same, and Lazin informs us in exacting deal of the various conflicts between the two and how they were forced to develop a policy acceptable to each. Eventually a compromise, formalized in the Lautenberg Amendment during the Gorbachev era, was reached that permitted a quota of Jews to come to America, either as persons entitled to refugee status or as independent immigrants with family ties in the United States. The Soviets' willingness to permit Jews to leave presented Israel with a potential flow of new immigrants. The Israelis wanted the Soviets to locate in Israel and were willing to offer them incentives for settlement. But what if Soviets preferred to settle in the United States? Americans Jews certainly knew of the needs of the Israeli government, but the Jewish Establishment also saw the issue in moral terms. With memory of the failure of the United States to accept many Jews during the 1930s, how could American Jews pressure the Russians to go to Israel if the United States was now willing to receive the Soviets? Shouldn't the Soviets be given a choice to pick either the United States or Israel, a choice they did not have during the Holocaust? And shouldn't American Jews speak out and lobby more forcibly than they did in the 1930s when they provided only a meager effort to rescue Jews caught in the Holocaust? One of Lazin's main points is the fact that, unlike the 1930s, American Jews were willing to pressure Congress and the president to accept Jews from the Soviet Union. He does not deal with a transitional period, right after World War II, but before the possibility of receiving these refugees became a reality. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) was the driving force behind the Displaced Persons legislation of 1948 and 1950. To be sure, the AJC worked behind the scenes, but it was nonetheless changing the Establishment's quiet role. Leonard Dinnerstein has told the story of the Displaced Persons in great deal, but his book is not included in the bibliography. Of course the issue was not simply one of the American versus Israeli Jews. There was the American government to deal with during the Cold War era, which involved Congress, the current administration, and ethnic lobbying. The potential exodus of Soviet Jews became a Cold War issue of trade and diplomatic relations of the United States and the Soviets, and not simply immigration. Russia was capable of permitting Jews (and others as well) to leave and then shutting down the exodus, depending upon the politics of the Cold [End Page 159] War. Thus after allowing a growing number to leave, the Soviets responded to the Jackson-Vanik Amendment concerning trade and investment by cutting the number allowed to leave, not to raise it again until the Cold War was winding down. It is difficult to find fault with such a thorough and carefully researched book. One problem, however, is the use of footnotes. Lazin sometimes puts the notes in the actual text and then refers to the...

European Zionism in the United States: The Americanization of Herzl's Doctrine by American Zionist Leaders--Case Studies

The emergence of Theodor Herzl as a Zionist leader and the creation of the Zionist movement occurred at the same time as the large Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to the United States, starting after 1881. Those millions arriving in New York produced one of the most significant demographic changes in modern Jewish history. Although Herzl was aware of this and appointed Jacob De Haas as his American representative, he did not pay special attention to the United States, and both among the Jews and in international politics his activities centered on Europe. Letters from him to American Zionist leaders indicate that his interest in the American Jewish community focused in the main on Zionist fund-raising.1 In sharp contrast to the scant attention he paid them, the image of Herzl the Zionist leader, his writings, and his worldview were central to American Zionists for generations. Speeches, sermons, memoirs, letters, and the social clubs named for him all attest to this. In this article I present the reasons why early American Zionism received Herzl’s ideas so enthusiastically despite communication difficulties, language barriers, and ideas born of his familiarity with Europe and thus difficult to adapt to the needs of American Jewry.2 In addition, I describe the unique way in which the American Jewish leadership adopted the Zionism of Herzl from the First Zionist Congress until the establishment of Israel as a state. Adapting Herzl’s work and thought to the American reality produced a special interpretation of Zionism centered around the legitimizing of Jewish existence in America while at the same time constructing the Zionist movement as a political, communal, and ideological tool for improving and reinforcing the Jewish position within American immigrant society.3 Observing the processes whereby Herzl’s theory became accepted by American Zionist leaders sheds light on the development of American Zionism and allows us a better understanding of its uniqueness.4

Two-Level Negotiations and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Failure of the Johnson Plan for the Palestinian Refugees, 1961–1962

The Kennedy administration sought to resolve the Palestine refugee problem in 1961–62 with a plan for compensation, resettlement, or repatriation under the formal auspices of the United Nations Palestine Conciliation Commission and negotiated by UN special envoy Dr. Joseph Johnson. The negotiations failed and the plan was canceled by the administration in December 1962. The article utilizes a multi-level conceptual model which examines the links between interstate negotiation, domestic politics and boundary-crossing interactions between foreign states and non-state domestic actors and their impact on foreign policy. It analyzes the multi-level negotiations that were conducted between representatives of the governments of Israel and the United States regarding the Johnson proposals, discussions held between Israel representatives and American Jewish leaders and prominent Jewish individuals, and between American government representatives and these same Jewish leaders and individuals. The study analyzes the factors that contributed to the failure of the plan and illustrates the nexus between foreign policy and domestic politics and the role of non-state actors in foreign policy decision making.

An Uneasy Relationship: American Jewish Leadership and Israel, 1948-1957, and: The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel versus the American Jewish Establishment, and: From Exodus to Freedom: A History of the Soviet Jewry Movement (review)

An Uneasy Relationship: American Jewish Leadership and Israel, 1948-1957, and: The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel versus the American Jewish Establishment, and: From Exodus to Freedom: A History of the Soviet Jewry Movement (review)

An uneasy relationship: American Jewish leadership and Israel, 1948-1957

Set in the first decade of modern Israel's existence, this volume offers an insightful look at the changing relationship of American Jews and the reborn Jewish nation/state. It is the first in-depth analysis of the subject during this key period. As the Cold War rages, leaders in all camps are shown attempting to shape and control the tangled circumstances that engulf them - especially American Jewish Committee president Jacob Blaustein, Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion, and American presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Tapping into private correspondence, diaries, oral history interviews, scholarly literature and other archival materials, Zvi Ganin provides a richly detailed look at motivations, passions, and attitudes of Jewish and Israeli leaders on numerous issues - none more affecting than in the stormy debate over dual loyalty.

The Jewish Settlements in the West Bank: International Law and Israeli Jurisprudence

MANY WHO CARE ABOUT ISRAEL have learned to stop caring about international law. After all, for forty years, Arab states, members of the Non-Aligned Movement and the former Soviet Union, have ceaselessly and atrociously manipulated international law so as to turn Israel into a pariah state among the nations. The UN's infamous resolutions equating Zionism with racism are only the best known examples.1 Each spring, when the UN Commission on Human Rights rolls out its allegations of Israeli human rights violations, this political body holds Israel to a far higher standard than it does states that have demonstrated far less commitment to the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter.2 For good reasons, many who love Israel have honed their contempt for international law.3 It can be hard to remember how much energy and optimism Jewish leaders invested in the development of international law in the two decades immediately following the Shoah. Those leaders recalled all too well what had happened when the first international legal system, the League of Nations, had disintegrated and left Nazi Germany without check, to treat its citizens in its own way. Now, it is hard to remember that it was the American Jewish Committee that convinced the states' representatives at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 that human rights should become one of the pillars of the UN's mission. Or that it was Rend Cassin, president of the Alliance Isradlite Universelle, who drafted the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Or that a Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin, coined the term genocide and pushed through the UN Genocide Convention. Or that two generations of American Jewish leaders saw international law as one of the cornerstones of their Never Forget/Never Again program, consistent with core Jewish values like tikkun olam, ger lo tilhaz, b'tselem elohim, kevod haberiyyoth, mippene darkhe shalom, and ben adam l'havero.

Flowers of Galilee

Flowers of Galilee breaks new ground in modern political discourse. Thisbook recommends a democratic one-state solution in all of historicalPalestine and the return of the Palestinians to rebuild their villages. Thebeautiful front cover painting by Suleiman Mansour of Jerusalem lovinglydepicts a Palestinian family, children seated on a donkey, walking past a hillcovered with olive trees. Similarly, Israel Shamir’s essays portray the peaceful,pastoral landscape of the Holy Land and the humanity of its inhabitants,juxtaposed against the ugliness and inhumanity of Jewish racism.These thought-provoking essays, written in Jaffa during the al-AqsaIntifada in 2001-02, call for Jews to leave their sense of exclusivity andplead for human equality. The author, a Russian immigrant to Israel in 1969,followed his meditations to their inevitable conclusion, renounced Judaism,and was baptized in the Palestinian Orthodox Christian Church ofJerusalem. A brilliant storyteller with a vast knowledge of history, he discussescurrent events and their global implications with brutal honesty andtenderness. His clear insights and lyrical use of language to illustrate social,religious, and political complexities make him the Khalil Gibran of our time.An important chapter, “The Last Action Heroes,” memorializes theSpring 2002 siege of Bethlehem. The Israeli army surrounded 40 monksand priests and 200 Palestinians seeking refuge in the Church of Nativity.For a month, “people starved ... Stench of corpses and of infected woundsfilled the old church” (p. 63). The UN did nothing, but a few InternationalSolidarity Movement activists from America and Europe, including theauthor’s son, broke the siege. One group distracted the soldiers while theothers rushed into the church’s gates, brought food and water, and helpednegotiate a surrender.Shamir deconstructs the legal fictions of the state of Israel and the elusivePalestinian state: “Israelis who would like to live in peace with theirPalestinian neighbors ... cannot counteract the raw muscle of the AmericanJewish leadership” (p.179). He further dissects the Jewish Holocaust cultand other Zionist public relations tactics. He exposes the two-state solutionas a political bluff, calls on the world to cut off aid to Israel, and admonishesthe Muslim world for indulging in usury ...

The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel versus the American Jewish Establishment (review)

Reviewed by: The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel Versus the American Jewish Establishment Nancy Isserman (bio) The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel Versus the American Jewish Establishment. By Fred A. Lazin. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. xii + 336 pp. One of the greatest exoduses in Jewish history occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century when over one million Soviet Jews emigrated from their homeland to the United States, other western countries, and Israel. Fred Lazin's carefully documented examination of the response of American Jews to the Soviet Jewry crisis of the late 1960s through 1989 explains how the American Jewish community came of age during this struggle. The maturation of the community is demonstrated by his comparison of the political behavior and influence of Jews throughout this several decades-long crisis to its response to the persecution of European Jews during World War II. Meticulously documented through access to the extensive archives of the Jewish Agency and through interviews with many of the key players, his case study provides new insights into the growth and political maturity of the American Jewish community. In Part One, Lazin describes the key role played by the Israeli government in the 1960s and '70s, in particular, in educating American Jews and American society at large about the plight of Soviet Jewry. Only in the past five or six years did people not intimately involved in the Soviet Jewry issue learn of the role of the Israeli government, and particularly of the Liaison Bureau, in initiating and directing the Soviet Jewry advocacy movement in its early years. Lazin's work documents in depth the work of the Liaison Bureau. For example, he notes that, from its organizing role in the 1971 Brussels Conference, the Liaison Bureau acquired formal contacts and influence with activists in every country. The Bureau's early influence came partly from its success in convincing the activists that it had better information on the Jews' condition in the U.S.S.R. From his thorough description of meetings, policy statements, and organizational actions, the pivotal role of the Israeli government in shaping the movement's early years in the U.S. is fully revealed In Part Two, Lazin details how the early influence of the Israeli government gave way before an increasingly independent position taken by American Jewish leaders and organizations. Lazin analyzes the "dropout" phenomenon, the situation, whereby at one point in time, most of the Soviet Jewish émigrés chose to resettle in the United States or other western European countries rather than in Israel. The main point of contention with Israel was American Jewish leaders' adoption of "freedom of choice" for the destination of the Soviet émigrés. Lazin notes that "underpinning freedom of choice was the collective memory of the American Jewish [End Page 377] experience during and after the Holocaust" (95). The American Jewish establishment, led by the Council of Jewish Federations and supported by the leadership of the local federations, resisted Israeli pressure and rejected an Israeli proposal to stop aiding Jewish émigrés who resettled in the United States. This American position stemmed from the "memories of political inaction and impotence in the face of closed American gates during the Holocaust together with a commitment to freedom of choice, the Jewish tradition of rescuing prisoners, organizational interests, and a desire by some to rejuvenate the American Jewish community" (129). This divergence in goals and policy from the Israeli government marks, so Lazin argues, the maturing of the American Jewish community. The final section of the book examines American Jewish advocacy during the Gorbachev era. Here Lazin analyzes how the American Jewish community's political maturity resulted in more effective political behavior in comparison with the communal response to the 1930s crisis. Unlike the 1930s, Jewish communal leaders in the later period had access to government officials. At the same time, when the American government sought to limit the number of Soviet Jewish émigrés to the United States, the leadership of the Jewish community supported this position, advocating direct flights from Eastern Europe to Israel. This policy change, for all practical purposes the abandonment of the...

An Uneasy Relationship: American Jewish Leadership and Israel, 1948-1957 (review)

An Uneasy Relationship: American Jewish Leadership and Israel, 1948-1957 (review)

Conflicts between American Jewish leaders and dissidents over responding to news of the Holocaust: three episodes from 1942 to 1943

(2003). Conflicts between American Jewish leaders and dissidents over responding to news of the Holocaust: three episodes from 1942 to 1943. Journal of Genocide Research: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 439-450.

Senator Jacob K. Javits and Soviet Jewish Emigration

Senator Jacob K. Javits rendered a critical service in writing the compromise wording and leading the negotiations over the Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974, which linked most- favored-nation trade status and subsidized low-interest government credits between the United States and the Soviet Union with a higher and more sustained level of Soviet Jewish emigration. As a Jewish Republican, Javits had to reconcile his relationship with the Nixon Administration, which regarded the linkage of trade agreements with human rights abuses as destructive of detente, with his support for Soviet Jews. Javits brought his ability to balance competing interests to make more moderate and flexible the amendment language. The influence of a Jewish Senator was critical because the established Jewish organizations were initially opposed to tying Soviet trade to emigration. His connections within the United States government and with the American Jewish leadership proved indispensable in aiding Soviet Jewish emigration.

Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership (review)

Reviewed by: Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership Karla Goldman Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership, by Naomi W. Cohen. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (Brandeis University Press), 1999. 320 pp. $35.00. Jacob Schiff was a singular figure in American Jewish history. He came to prominence at a time when one man, given sufficient financial resources, personal commitment, and communal vision, could dominate and define the public agenda for the entire commun ity of American Jews. From 1880 through 1920, Schiff stood at the center of American Jewish public life, a key figure in shaping its institutions, its relationship to the nation’s political leadership, and its role in international efforts to respond to Jewish persecution and suffering across the globe. The era of Schiff’s communal leadership coincided of course with the greatest period of Jewish immigration from Russia and Eastern Europe to the United States, expanding the nation’s Jewish population from a few hundred thousand to more than a few million. The harsh economic and social conditions encountered by huge numbers of Jewish immigrants placed unprecedented demands on the nation’s acculturated Jewish community as it sought both to cushion the deprivations faced by the new arrivals and to ensure that they learned to behave like proper Americans. Schiff embodied the engaged response of a significant segment of the established community working tirelessly if quietly to push American policymakers to pressure Russia into ending anti-Jewish persecution and pogroms. Publicly, he led the way in creating institutions like the Montefiore Hospital, the Hebrew Free Loan Society, and the Henry Street settlement house directed by Lillian Wald, which were meant to attend to the physical, economic, and social well-being of the newcomers. At the same time Schiff was instrumental in establishing and defining the program of institutions (like the Jewish Theological Seminary and the American Jewish Committee) that would define the broader course of the American Jewish community. There seems to have hardly been one aspect of Jewish communal life in which Schiff did not take a central role. [End Page 139] As suggested by its subtitle, Naomi Cohen’s biography, Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership, etches the public life of a public man. Apart from being told that Schiff enjoyed spending time with his family, we learn little about his day-to- day life or his personal relationships. This seems a reasonable biographical choice, although it is complicated by the extent to which, in Schiff’s world, business and public relationships mirrored private relationships established by marriage and birth. Cohen does make clear that Schiff’s professional opportunities and accomplishments were shaped by the world of German Jewish immigrants he encountered in New York as a new arrival from Frankfurt-am-Main in 1865. Likewise, the organizational structure of his business concern, Kuhn, Loeb, was completely determined by family connections. Schiff married the daughter of his employer Solomon Loeb, and his own son and son- in-law (Felix Warburg) in time rose to take their places among the various kinfolk who constituted the Kuhn, Loeb leadership. Although Cohen offers little insight into Schiff’s personal life, she does convey a sense of his personal style, emphasizing that Schiff’s engagement in all his fields of interest represented much more than the expenditure of cash or the exercise of power. In all the causes close to his heart, Schiff took an active and engaged role both in setting policy and in reaching out to those being served. He was a familiar presence at these institutions. Although he may have felt that his understanding of what it took to succeed in America meant that he knew what was best for newer immigrants and those who served them, Cohen emphasizes that Schiff encountered his beneficiaries as authentic individuals with authentic needs. As she convincingly demonstrates, the regard and esteem that Schiff won among the immigrant community reflected far more than just attempts to please a wealthy donor. At times the deliberately limited scope of Cohen’s portrait is frustrating. The author offers a fascinating account of Schiff’s extensive investment in Japan and how he essentially...

Henry Kissinger's Prescription for Suppressing the First Intifada, 31 January 1988

In June 1988, under the title "Kissinger Behind Closed Doors," Harper's Magazine published an extraordinary confidential memorandum describing a breakfast meeting held by American Jewish leaders with Henry Kissinger on 31 January 1988 to discuss the Palestinian uprising that had broken out almost two months earlier. The memorandum, written by Julius Berman, the former chair of the Conference ofPresidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and sent to a group of friends, was leaked to the press in March 1988. According to Harper's, "Kissinger reacted angrily to the leaking of the memo, but did not dispute its accuracy. "JPS finds it appropriate to republish the memorandum, leaving it to the reader to ponder its relevance to Israel's conduct during Operation Defensive Shield and to the current talk of convening a peace conference.

Baksheesh Diplomacy: Secret Negotiations Between American Jewish Leaders and Arab Officials on the Eve of World War II (review)

Baksheesh Diplomacy: Secret Negotiations Between American Jewish Leaders and Arab Officials on the Eve of World War II. By Rafael Medoff. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001. 190 pp.

Kissinger and the American Jewish Leadership after the 1973 War

THE ATTACKS ON ISRAEL ON OCTOBER 6, 1973 caught her by surprise. Building on this advantage the Egyptian and Syrian armies made significant advances into the Sinai and the Golan Heights. After absorbing punishing assaults for several days, Israel was able to assimilate its reserves and launch counter-attacks. After hard fighting on both fronts, Israel recovered lost ground and advanced even further into Egypt and Syria stopping ioo kilometers from Cairo and on the approaches to Damascus. Nevertheless, the cost had been very high with about three thousand dead and enormous material losses. The reasons for this conflict, the magnitude of the loss versus the gains, and the prospects for the future became the central issues of discussion and debate after the war within Israel as well as among its friends, including American Jews. The two related documents presented here capture that evaluation among Israel's supporters. Both are incomplete but suggestive memoranda from meetings in December 1973 ofAmerican Jewish leaders with theJewish Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. The first memorandum is a discussion with leading American intellectuals including Norman Podhoretz (Editor of Commentary), Irving Howe (Editor of Dissent), and a group of academics from Harvard and M.I.T., the area where Kissenger had spent much of his academic career. These included Henry Rosovsky, Michael Walzer, David Landes, Kenneth Arrow, Seymour M. Lipset and Rita Hauser. The second meeting was conducted with prominent activists in the Jewish community including the philanthropist Max Fisher, prominent rabbis and heads of leading Jewish organizations. While the meeting with the intellectuals was an ad hoc gathering it was not exceptional in a time of crisis. Meetings with the heads of the organized Jewish community over issues concerning Israel and other matters vital to Jews had become institutionalized. Indeed, such gatherings were often intended to play the role of a two-way conduit. They

Kissinger and the American Jewish Leadership after the 1973 War

Kissinger and the American Jewish Leadership after the 1973 War

Baksheesh diplomacy: secret negotiations between American Jewish leaders and Arab officials on the eve of World War II

Baksheesh diplomacy: secret negotiations between American Jewish leaders and Arab officials on the eve of World War II

Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership

Book Review| April 01 2001 Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership, Naomi W. Cohen. Daniel Soyer Daniel Soyer Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2001) 20 (3): 157–158. https://doi.org/10.2307/27502723 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Daniel Soyer; Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2001; 20 (3): 157–158. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/27502723 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2001 Immigration and Ethnic History Society2001 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Jacob H. Schiff: a study in American Jewish leadership

Jacob H. Schiff: a study in American Jewish leadership

Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership (review)

Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership (review)