American Zionism Research Articles

ספרניות וספרנים מארצות הברית והשפעתם על כינון עולם הספריות בישראל

From the early 20th century on, American experts in librarianship helped establish the libraries of Israel. One such expert was Sophie Udin, an American Zionist activist who, like other experts, considered herself an agent of American modernization. Her activity in the Yishuv and the State of Israel is central to the history of American influence on Israeli Librarianship and spanned the decades of the 1920s and 1950s. She and her professional colleagues from North America brought with them concepts and methodologies that differed greatly from the traditional German system they encountered upon their arrival. Thus, they challenged the traditions that were in place in the emerging National Library and opened a gradual if obstacle-ridden path to change. The library organizations and collaborations they initiated eventually led to the recognition of librarianship as a profession requiring dedicated training, and of the library as a public rather than a purely academic educational resource. Moreover, since American librarianship is education-oriented, this played a significant role in the feminization of librarianship in Israel.

AIPAC’s founding and the evolution of aid to Israel

ABSTRACT This exploration delves into the intricate history of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), navigating its genesis and the concurrent establishment of U.S. aid to Israel. The narrative unfolds against the post-World War II backdrop, exploring pivotal moments involving key figures like Isaiah L. Kenen, Abba Eban, and Louis Lipsky. As the Israeli embassy grappled with challenges in securing financial aid, Kenen’s vision crystallized into the creation of a domestic lobby group. AIPAC, initially known as the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (AZCPA), emerged, meticulously navigating the American legislative landscape to advocate for Israel. The lobby’s focus on bipartisan support, strategic alliances, and grassroots efforts paved the way for the landmark Morse–Taft Act, representing the first-ever U.S. financial aid to Israel. The narrative unfolds with a spotlight on Kenen’s strategic maneuvering, demonstrating how he deftly linked Israel’s aid to a broader regional approach, garnering support and mitigating opposition. The bill’s journey through Congress, from committee discussions to public endorsements, reflects Kenen’s orchestration of a multifaceted campaign.

“Judea Declares War on Britain”: The Impact of American Jewish Anti-Nazi Protests on the Struggle for a Jewish State, 1945–1948

Abstract American Jews’ mass protests against Nazi antisemitism, begun soon after Hitler assumed power, provided a major impetus to, and model for, the post–World War II drive to establish a Jewish state. This postwar agitation had a considerable impact because, after the Holocaust, the Jewish population in the United States far exceeded that of any other country. The mass demonstrations of 1945–1948 were as large as those of the 1930s, even reaching 250,000, and in both periods, it was working- and lower–middle-class Jews who provided the intense commitment and huge numbers that proved critically important. Many speakers who had addressed the anti-Nazi rallies were featured at the postwar demonstrations for a Jewish state. Now promoting Zionist goals, American Jews turned to work stoppages, neighborhood rallies, and boycotts—resuming tactics deployed in the anti-Nazi campaign. Similarly, American Jews’ grassroots 1930s campaign to transport Jewish children from Nazi Germany to Palestine resurfaced after the Holocaust as a drive to generate mass support for the Haganah’s efforts to run Jewish displaced persons through the British blockade of Palestine. To great effect, American Zionists also frequently drew parallels between the Nazis’ actions and the British treatment of Jews in displaced persons camps, on refugee ships, and in the Yishuv.

The Hebrew Orient: Palestine in Jewish American Visual Culture, 1901–1938 by Jessica L. Carr

Reviewed by: The Hebrew Orient: Palestine in Jewish American Visual Culture, 1901–1938 by Jessica L. Carr Zohar Segev Jessica L. Carr. The Hebrew Orient: Palestine in Jewish American Visual Culture, 1901–1938. Albany: SUNY Press, 2020. 299 pp. The evolution of the Zionist movement under Herzl's leadership coincided with the mass migration of eastern European Jews to the United States that lasted from 1881 until the de facto closure of the United States borders to Jewish immigrants in 1924. American Zionist leaders worked out a unique interpretation of Zionism centered on the quest to legitimize Jewish life in the United States within the bounds of Zionism. They tried to build a Zionist movement that would provide the political, public, and ideological means for improving and bolstering the status of Jews in American immigrant society. Initially, American Zionism was an underfunded minority movement, but subsequently, most markedly following Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis's Zionist activity during World War I and the Balfour Declaration, it became one of the most dominant public forces among American Jews and played a major role in the dramatic events experienced by the Jewish people in the 1930s and 1940s. The founding fathers of American Zionism invested considerable intellectual effort into formulating an ideological amalgam that would reconcile Herzl's philosophy with the American version of Zionism. American Zionism did indeed travel a different path from that of its European counterpart. American Zionists generally did not stress migration to Palestine as a fundamental tenet of their ideology and practice, preferring instead to cultivate Zionism as a central component in the fabric of their lives within American society rather than as a means to promote migration to the Land of Israel. Jessica L. Carr's valuable and absorbing book provides a unique and fascinating contribution toward understanding the course of the development of American Zionism and toward illuminating the complex network of relationships that existed between the Zionist movement and the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine, [End Page 458] and between the State of Israel and the American Jewish community. Orientalism and the way in which it is reflected in a wide variety of pictures and images provides the framework for the book's argument. Carr's book begins with a comprehensive discussion of its theoretical background, focusing mainly on the general concept of Orientalism while highlighting its specifically American manifestations. The use of Orientalism as a central organizing theme defining the collection of pictures presented in the book enables the author to discuss the fundamental questions concerning the place of Zionism among American Jews in general and during the first half of the twentieth century in particular. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a discussion of images connected to an organization, event, or publication, such as The Zionist Organization of America, The National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, The Jewish Encyclopedia, The Jewish Exhibit and Jewish Day at the 1933 World's Fair, and maternalism in Hadassah's "Propaganda." We learn from the book that Orientalism was harnessed by American Jewish opinion shapers as a means to mitigate the tension between the opposition of American Jews in general and the Reform movement in particular to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, and the Zionist movement, which aimed to do exactly that. The use of oriental rather than national elements was an indispensable tool in this process. Orientalism served to forge an affinity with the Land of Israel while eschewing nationalist imagery. The author correctly notes that Orientalism was also a crucial component of Christian imagery relating to the Land of Israel, and that this facilitated the use of these images in a Jewish context as well. Naturally, after the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and as the crisis of European Jewry deepened until its tragic culmination in the Holocaust, the Zionist and national elements in the pictures presented in the book came more to the fore, testifying to the growing importance of Zionism among American Jews. Throughout the book, Carr emphasizes the fact that Mizrahi Jews and Arab inhabitants of Palestine were excluded from the pictures published in the United States. Insofar as they did appear, they were portrayed as passive bystanders who...

Immigration, Ideology, and Public Activity from an American Jewish Perspective: A Journey Across Three Continents by Zohar Segev (review)

Reviewed by: Immigration, Ideology, and Public Activity from an American Jewish Perspective: A Journey Across Three Continents by Zohar Segev Michael Keren (bio) Immigration, Ideology, and Public Activity from an American Jewish Perspective: A Journey Across Three Continents. By Zohar Segev. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2022. x + 233 pp. One of the hardest questions related to the Holocaust concerns the failure of Jewish organizations in the United States to persuade the American government to rescue European Jews by the bombardment of Auschwitz or by any other means. In order to understand that failure, it is useful to look at the persuasion efforts made at the time by American Jewish leaders as well as by second level officials within American Jewish organizations. Zohar Segev's book is based on the personal archives of four Europeanborn Jews who found refuge in the United States during the Second World War and held several positions in American Jewish organizations. Arieh Tartakover, an historian and sociologist who later taught at the Hebrew University, chaired the World Jewish Congress's Welfare and Relief Committee; Arieh Kubovy, later an Israeli diplomat and head of Yad Va'shem, chaired the World Jewish Congress's Rescue Committee based in New York; Benjamin Akzin, a jurist who later taught at the Hebrew University, was a consultant to the American Zionist Emergency Council in Washington; and Jacob Robinson, a lawyer and researcher, founded the Institute of Jewish Affairs, the research arm of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress. The experience of individuals who operated within the American Jewish organizational network in the 1940s seems an invaluable source for an exploration of the political, administrative and cultural causes behind the successes and failures of that network to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Since the author has decided, however, that this question [End Page 418] is beyond the scope of his study, we are left with a description of activities conducted by the four men, mainly letters they wrote, which in themselves had no impact on the outcome of the war. Some of the letters are quite instructive though, if only because of the responses they elicited. Consider the responses Kubovy received to letters he wrote to Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy. In August 9, 1944, he conveyed a request from a Jewish activist in Czechoslovakia to bomb Auschwitz and the railway lines leading to it, which McCloy rejected on the grounds that such actions would require the use of significant air power and might not be effective. He also made the incredible claim that the bombardment could lead the Germans to institute even stricter measures against the Jews. When a few weeks later Kubovy sent McCloy another letter calling not for aerial bombing but for destruction of the death camp by paratroopers, the response was striking in its bureaucratic language. The assistant secretary informed Kubovy that the operations he suggested fell within the jurisdiction of the Allied Mediterranean Commander, who had been fully informed of the situation in the death camp areas. McCloy added that he was sure the theater commander "would do anything he felt he could to check these ghastly excesses of the Nazis" (87). One wonders why this dismissive response led Segev to conclude that it reflects serious consideration of the matter by government officials in Washington and American military leaders. The author is aware of the enormous frustration the four men felt as a result of the ineffectiveness of the rescue efforts they took part in. However, with some exceptions, such as Kubovy's criticism of Stephen Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, we are given few clues as to their attitudes toward the top Jewish leadership, a matter which, once again, is claimed to be beyond the scope of this study. The book thus makes a contribution by bringing to light documents by four refugee immigrants who worked in American Jewish organizations during the 1940s and played an active role in the Zionist movement before and after the establishment of the State of Israel, but the documents are still awaiting an analysis within a broader scope. [End Page 419] Michael Keren University of Calgary and Western Galilee Academic College Michael Keren...

Rabbi Balfour Brickner, Interreligious Dialogue, and the Ironies of Liberal Zionism in America, 1967‒1980

After the June 1967 Middle East war, liberal Zionism in the United States was transformed from an assumption into an embattled claim. From the 1940s to the 1960s, most Americans had assumed that liberalism and Zionism went together naturally. Only under pressure of criticism did liberal Zionists emerge as a self-aware faction within American Zionism. Starting in 1967, among the first to question the assumption of liberal Zionism were progressive Protestants, and fissures around Zionism among American progressives appeared in interreligious dialogue between Reform Jews and liberal white Protestants. Rabbi Balfour Brickner, a leading liberal Reform rabbi and a key interlocutor for such Protestants, stood in the thick of this dialogue, and his negotiation of liberal Zionism's passage from assumption to claim reveals that transformation vividly.

Media Performance of American Zionist lobby and its Role in Strengthening Hatred Speech for Afmerican Public Opinion

Modern media play a very important and dangerous role of affecting local and intermational public opinion changing their role from presenting and alalysing news to major player to deform destroy deeply rooted values, replace them with different values affects deeply on comceptions, beliefs, ideas, behawiour of individ was and how they see counter part observer of performance of American media enterpreses feels that they present a very fake and deformed image of Arabs, islam, theit main issue Palestine because of Zionist lobby and its influence over American media, specially after 9/11. Media exaggerated in degrading Arabs, call them worst names, mock their civilazztion, scientific contributions, injustice of their cause Now the image inside the mind of common American and Public American opinion of Arab and Muslim society is attached to terrorism, violence and radicality and on the other hand madezionist Hebrew state enjoy sophistication, democracy and needs support and opprove. Thus comes the proplem of this research. Are the great roles of American media affirmed values of peace, forgiveness and co existence among people and states? Or because of strong influence of American Zionist lobby strengthened hatred speed of American public opinion through this negative, deformed and fake image of Arab and Islamic societies in general and their central cuses in partieular. Thus American Media was not an honest mediator to give true objective media information.

The Hebrew Orient: Palestine in Jewish American Visual Culture, 1901-1938 by Jessica L. Carr

Reviewed by: The Hebrew Orient: Palestine in Jewish American Visual Culture, 1901-1938 by Jessica L. Carr Mira Katzburg-Yungman (bio) The Hebrew Orient: Palestine in Jewish American Visual Culture, 1901-1938. By Jessica L. Carr. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020. 299 pp. Jessica L. Carr's highly analytic book aims at understanding Jewish Americans' self-image from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the Second World War through their visual culture of the "Hebrew Orient," the term she uses for Jewish Americans' view of Palestine. The author assumes that the self-image is well reflected through viewing others and aims to explore multiple self-images and identities, particularly in terms of cultural and gender identities. A broad systematic introduction depicting the analytic approach of the author explains the aims, major terms, and concepts used in the book. It is here that the term "visual culture" is defined as "everything that the eye can see, as well as mental processes brought at the moment of seeing" (13). The book is full of illustrations, photographs, and other images presented and analyzed in depth. Chapter 1, "'The Orient' as Jewish Heritage" discusses the book's key term "Hebrew (or Jewish) Orient" in vast detail. The author highlights the "Hebrew Orient" as a tool to reveal American Jews' cultural self-image through viewing their understanding of their "Hebrew Oriental" Jewish heritage and the contemporary inhabitants (pioneers, Mizrahim, and Arabs) of Palestine. This is the raison d'être of the author's preference for using the term Hebrew Orient rather than Palestine. Carr acknowledges her inability to include all Jewish American groups of the time under examination (1901-1938) and consequently decided to choose five representatives, or case studies. The book's chapters are constructed accordingly: Chapter Two explores the Orientalist visual culture of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA—initially, the Federation of American Zionists) as reflected in its publications. The third chapter explores the visual culture of the "Hebrew Orient" of the Reform National Federation of Temple Sisterhood (NFTS) through the lens of the NFTS's chapter conferences, yearbooks, letters, posters, and newsletters. Here and in other places in the book the author exceeds her declared aim and reaches additional valuable conclusions. In this case she analyzes among other things how the organization's women "created a new space for themselves in the practice of Reform Judaism without challenging traditional roles of men" (25). Chapter Four focuses [End Page 203] on the vision of (Ashkenazi) Jewish heritage as reflected in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906). Chapter Five next focuses on the popular arena to explore "how Jewish Americans transformed historical Jewish narratives into popular forms at the 1933 'Century of Progress World's Fair' in Chicago" (26). Finally, Chapter Six addresses the visual culture of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America. Similar to many other gender scholars, Carr views gender analysis as leading "to a better understanding of both women and men" (16). To reach such an understanding, she explores two Zionist organizations, the male-led largest organization, the ZOA, and Hadassah, the major American women's Zionist organization. The non-Zionist American organizations are also represented by male and female representatives: the NFTS and the scholarly milieu of the Jewish Encyclopedia, although in different years. However, while the other Jewish groups of the time may have their own representation within the groups explored in the book, most of the Yiddish-speaking immigrants — a very large sector at the time — has no representation, although the Yiddish press could have been used quite easily. The reason might be the author's view of them as immigrants, not fully Jewish Americans. Nevertheless, the book fulfills its author's promise to bring a rich and varied panorama of envisioning the "Hebrew Orient" by various Jewish groups. It also shows how various Jewish identities and self-images are reflected through their visual culture. In doing so the author shows, for example, how Hadassah women's self-image as "modern westerners" is reflected through the organization's images. In the same vein the author's analysis demonstrate how the Jewish Encyclopedia's scholars aspired to integrate the Orient into the...

Dorothy Thompson and American Zionism

“If only one could say, and dismiss it with that, ‘These people are savages.’ They are—but they are a new and terrifying kind of savage. The twentieth century and the white civilized world produced this savage.”1 –Dorothy Thompson, “The Lessons of Dachau,” Ladies Home Journal, September 1945 When the readers of the Ladies Home Journal turned to Thompson’s article, after paging through columns offering housekeeping and beauty advice, they faced a somber shift in tone in the journalist’s descriptions of the Dachau concentration camp. Thompson’s problematic language about civilization, race, and savagery echoed the themes of a novel by one of her favorite authors, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which described another genocidal atrocity at the hands of white Belgians in the Congo. In 1941 she had lamented the shortcomings of journalism to fully represent the war and expressed hope that it would produce “a Victor Hugo,...

"Weizmann to her was God": Dorothy Thompson's Journey to and from Zionism

"Weizmann to her was God":Dorothy Thompson's Journey to and from Zionism1 Walker Robins (bio) At a 1941 event at the Hotel Astor in New York City, Zionist statesman Chaim Weizmann took the stage before 2,500 guests to hail American columnist Dorothy Thompson as a "modern Deborah" and to thank her for her efforts on behalf of the Jewish people.2 Those efforts were by then well known to the American public. As a journalist, Thompson had been among the earliest, most vociferous critics of Nazism. As a political commentator, she had used her platform to focus Americans' attention on the unfolding refugee crisis in Europe while privately organizing support for the refugee population. By the 1941 event in New York, Thompson was well on her way to becoming perhaps the most high-profile non-Jewish supporter of Zionism in the United States. She was unrelenting in these causes. Some called her Cassandra for her oftprophetic tones. For Jews like Weizmann, though, she was Deborah. Within a decade, however, many Jewish leaders had different names for Thompson. By 1949, Rabbi Joseph Shubow of Boston was proclaiming that "The Dorothy that we once knew as a veritable prophetess Deborah … has since become a Jezebel."3 What had changed? In the years since World War II, Thompson had ceased her pro-Zionist activism and penned several columns critical of Zionist and Israeli actions. Thompson was hardly an anti-Zionist at the time, but Shubow's condemnation came as Jewish activists affiliated with the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism (ACJ) were recruiting her to their cause. Their efforts would prove effective. Within months, Thompson published what became—at least to many American supporters of Israel—an infamous critique of American Zionism in Commentary. Within two years, she helped found the American Friends of the Middle East, an organization dedicated in [End Page 55] part to countering the effects of American Zionists on US relations to the Middle East. By then, the woman who had arguably been the leading non-Jewish supporter of Zionism in the United States was among its foremost critics. Because of Thompson's previous renown as an advocate for Jews and Zionism, the question of what caused her shift took on outsized significance. Was something wrong with Zionism? Or with Thompson? Contemporaries offered a number of explanations. Jewish critics like Shubow and Rabbi Baruch Korff suggested that she had been bought off by Arab interests or that her third husband, Maxim Kopf (a Czech citizen of ethnic German background), was responsible.4 Thompson's close friend Meyer Weisgal, Zionist editor and secretary to Weizmann, argued that it was such attacks themselves that had pushed her into the arms of anti-Zionist activists.5 Another close friend, journalist Vincent Sheean, claimed that her change of heart had come after experiencing a vision of Jesus while hospitalized in Jerusalem.6 Thompson herself put the matter simply—that her support for Zionism had been based on assumptions that proved untrue.7 Scholars have likewise offered varying explanations, with most centered on Thompson's first substantial exposure to the Arab perspective during a 1945 trip to Palestine.8 [End Page 56] Amid so many explanations—or, accusations, even—of why Thompson shifted her support, scholars have not thoroughly analyzed the substance of her views as they evolved over time.9 This essay does that, tracing Thompson's engagement with Zionism as she moved from journalist to advocate and from advocate to critic. In doing so, it reveals Chaim Weizmann as the pivot around which Thompson's relationship to Zionism turned. Thompson's relationship with Weizmann was decisive in turning an existing appreciation of Zionism into passionate advocacy—Thompson not only came to adopt and adapt Weizmann's arguments for the movement but to view the statesman himself as the embodiment of it. She therefore fit a largely understudied pattern in American non-Jews' engagement with Zionism of investing the "true" meaning of the movement in the image of specific leaders.10 For a time, Thompson's identification of Zionism with Weizmann led her to advocacy. In the years following World War II, however—as Zionists began campaigns of terror against...

The Attitudes of American Jews and Christian Zionists towards Politics of Israel

For Israel maintaining strong relations with Diaspora remains one of the key goals as the Jewish State. American Jewry, American Zionist organizations and Pro-Israel lobbyists have been playing an important role in organizing support and providing assistance for Israel in the US. However, in the XXI century there is a deepening crisis between the Jewish state and American Jewish community, mainly, because of dissatisfaction of Israel’s domestic and foreign policy. Managing the risks of lowering support from the US, that are the most important strategic partners for Jerusalem, Israel has intensified its rapprochement with the US Christian Zionists, who are the most consistent supporters the Jewish state as “the Zionist project”. The Christian Zionist’s interest in Israel is based on the Bible's theological interpretation of the significance of the gathering and preservation of the Jews in Palestine (and then in Israel) for the ultimate salvation of mankind. Despite the controversy of this concept to the core principles of Judaism and Zionism, the significance of their support, primarily political, for Israel is currently increasing.

The Old and the New Israel: The Cultural Origins of the Special Relationship

Abstract Understandings of the new American nation as a “Second Israel,” and a prevalent political discourse devoted to the narratives of the Old Testament, were a distinct trait of the early United States. Indeed, the images and narratives of the Old Testament were as common in the formative decades of the United States, in the words of the great historian Perry Miller, as “the air that the people breathed.” This attachment to the Old Testament, and the fact that American nationalism and twentieth century Zionism crystalized around the biblical history of the Israelites, bears considerably on the relationship of the two nations. The “special” bond between the modern countries, which is commonly understood in terms of pragmatism, interests, and shared ideologies, thus rests on a deep cultural connection. The American public’s consistent backing of the State of Israel (one that far surpasses the constituency of evangelical Christian Zionists), which politically translates into a robust, lasting and bi-partisan support that defies the arithmetic of appeals to Jewish voters (or donors) seems puzzling at times. It becomes more intelligible in light of the centuries-long tradition of American public speech describing the nation as a new incarnation of biblical Israel. This usable biblical past, which continues to influence American culture in meaningful ways, adds an important dimension for our understanding of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel.

Irish Nationalism as an Inspiration for American Zionists in the Early Twentieth Century: As exemplified by Boston Lawyer Louis D. Brandeis’s Speeches and Writings

Irish Nationalism as an Inspiration for American Zionists in the Early Twentieth Century: As exemplified by Boston Lawyer Louis D. Brandeis’s Speeches and Writings

Mainstream and Radicalism in American Zionism: The Avukah Affair, 1934–1945

Mainstream and Radicalism in American Zionism:The Avukah Affair, 1934–1945 Tal Elmaliach (bio) The American Zionist student organization Avukah embarked on a profound transformation in the mid-1930s. Avukah, founded in 1925, was the main representative of the Zionist movement on American campuses. In the years that followed, it metamorphosed from being apolitical, in the sense that it did not support or affiliate with any specific Zionist party or ideology, into a radical left movement that viewed the world through the lens of Marxist analysis, while critiquing American capitalism. It also supported a socialist and binational Jewish-Arab state in Palestine. This put the movement into conflict with both the American Zionist establishment and other groups of young Zionists. At the beginning of the 1940s, the conflict grew more acute, and its adversaries demanded that Avukah disband. They refused to have any connection with it and, in 1943, the Zionist leadership established a new student organization in its place. Avukah carried on for another two years without support from the Zionist establishment, finally disintegrating in 1945. Avukah's story is not well known, and so far, no coherent account of its path to radicalism and oblivion has been written. That is not to say that its history has not been told—indeed it has, at times in great detail, in a number of works that have focused on subjects indirectly connected to it.1 But these works contradict each other. Some take no account of Avukah's radicalization, while others recount it while disagreeing about [End Page 343] its causes and its manifestations. Neither is there any consensus about how and whether its radicalization contributed to its demise. Furthermore, the case of Avukah does not fit easily into the larger historical context, either that of young Jews around the world during that same period or that of American Zionism. In fact, the study of the Zionist movement has addressed other instances in which the mainstream grappled with groups of young people who underwent left-wing radicalization (mostly, like Avukah, in the 1930s).2 But Avukah's case is different. The left-wing radicalization that took place simultaneously in Europe and in the Yishuv—the Jewish community in Palestine—consisted largely of cases of young Zionist leftists who shifted into anti-Zionist movements. For the most part, they adopted communism and idolized the Soviet Union, which led to them being condemned by mainstream Zionism. Avukah, in contrast, was firmly anti-Bolshevik, and remained Zionist throughout its existence. It thus does not fit into the common model of the leftward turn as it appears in Zionist historiography of Europe and Palestine. That begs a question: Was American Zionism different in this regard? When Avukah's story is examined in relation to the conventions of historical writing on American Zionism, it challenges the existing research. These works depict the movement in the United States as having American liberal-progressive characteristics, currently referred to as "General Zionism" in Zionist politics.3 As Rafael Medoff has written, "After all, most American Zionists were 'stam Zionists.' They were convinced of the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, but not wedded to any particular vision of that homeland's future economic, social, or religious contours."4 [End Page 344] On the face of it, Avukah seems simply to have adopted the views of the socialist wing of American Zionism, which included established organizations such as the avowedly Marxist Poale Zion and the Hashomer Hatza'ir youth movement.5 But that view is problematic for several reasons. First, socialist Zionism did not have much influence in the United States, and during the period in question, its youth wings were riven by internal conflict and had little capacity for recruiting new members.6 It was thus unreasonable to expect that this wing could incorporate all Zionist activity on US campuses. Second, by the mid-1930s, Poale Zion had become relatively moderate in its social views, and was largely a Palestine-centered group that focused on the settlement of that country.7 Hashomer Hatza'ir was more radical, and indeed maintained relations with Avukah on that basis, but differed from it in that it explicitly sympathized with the...

Horace Kallen in the Heartland: The Midwestern Roots of American Pluralism by Michael C. Steiner

Reviewed by: Horace Kallen in the Heartland: The Midwestern Roots of American Pluralism by Michael C. Steiner Jeanne Abrams (bio) Horace Kallen in the Heartland: The Midwestern Roots of American Pluralism. By Michael C. Steiner. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020. xi + 240 pp. German-born and Harvard-educated American Jewish philosopher Horace Meyer Kallen is best known for introducing the influential concept of cultural pluralism in the early decades of the twentieth century, and it is a theory which continues to resonate to this day. Kallen maintained that diverse immigrants and minority groups cultivated their own social spaces and that they interacted to create an inclusive, ever-changing American overarching culture. In Horace Kallen in the Heartland, Michael C. Steiner, a professor emeritus of American Studies at California State, argues persuasively that the seven, often restless, years that Kallen spent in the Midwest, a "matrix of cultural pluralism," played a pivotal, although often overlooked role in the development and maturation of his thought on the subject (2). In fact, Steiner maintains that Kallen's sojourn in the Midwest (1911–1918), including his visits to Chicago and his stint at the University of Wisconsin, "ensured that Kallen's sweeping theory reached full expression" in that region (73). Steiner asserts that it was there that the crucial finishing touches were added and that Kallen's essential message contained a clear warning against the "forces of uniformity and tyranny" (2). Steiner clearly admires what he refers to as the expansive vision reflected in the work of Kallen and the other thought leaders he interacted with who came into his intellectual orbit during his time in the Midwest. [End Page 310] He observes that they "forged a generous open-ended vision of diversity in the face of rising white racism and vicious war hysteria" and notes that Kallen often urged his own University of Wisconsin students to "embrace their ethnic heritage" (3, 107). At first, Kallen bemoaned his life in Wisconsin in what he considered a backwater compared to the East Coast, particularly Boston, where he grew up. However, he soon grew to appreciate the Midwest "region's intellectual vitality and urban and rural diversity," and his time there included some of the most productive years in terms of his writing (17). Kallen's ideas served as a counterpoint to the contemporary melting pot theory made popular by English-born Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill. According to Steiner, in contrast to Kallen, Zangwill's narrow concept "promoted the abandonment of ethnic identity in the crucible of American Culture" (85). Kallen left the University of Wisconsin in 1918, and in 1919 he became a founding faculty member at the New School for Social Research in New York. Although his seminal ideas evolved, expanded, and occasionally waned over time, through his interaction with a cross section of public figures, including key Black intellectuals, social activists, and artists, Kallen remained a vocal champion of cultural pluralism through most of his lifetime, even up to his death at the age of ninety-two in 1974. He became a particularly active proponent after World War II, and Steiner asserts that in the late 1950s, Kallen adopted an even more generous version of pluralism than he had espoused forty years earlier. Kallen was also an early and staunch defender and prime mover of American Zionism until the 1920s. He even convinced Louis Brandeis that support of Zionism enhanced American patriotism and accusations of dual loyalties were unfounded aspersions. Michael C. Steiner is an eloquent writer who has mastered the relevant primary and secondary sources to weave an informative, detailed, and often engaging narrative. He does a fine job of demonstrating the centrality of the Midwest to Kallen's influential theory. Despite the relatively slim size of the volume, however, the book is often repetitive. For example, the countless number of times the word "expansive" is used becomes tiresome. Nevertheless, Steiner has provided an important new perspective on Kallen's life and work, one that opens a wider window in which to examine the factors that influenced the creation of an intellectual paradigm that has remained influential and relevant for over a century. Moreover, he reminds us of the underlying importance...

Before the New Antisemitism: Arab Critics of Zionism and American Jewish Politics, 1917-1974

Before the New Antisemitism:Arab Critics of Zionism and American Jewish Politics, 1917-1974 Geoffery P. Levin1 (bio) On June 5, 1937, WNYC radio aired a town-hall event organized in New York by an Arab American group, the Arab National League (ANL). It opened with ANL President Dr. Fuad Shatara reading a cable from the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, congratulating the guest of honor, poet Ameen Rihani, and continued with several speeches critical of Zionism.2 Almost immediately, the ANL and WNYC came under attack by New York City Alderman Samson Inselbuch, who charged them with spreading antisemitism.3 WNYC and the ANL, however, soon found defense from the highest echelons of American Jewish leadership—B'nai B'rith Vice President Louis Fabricant, American Jewish Committee (AJC) official Sol Stroock, Orthodox leader Rabbi Herbert Goldstein, the National Council of Jewish Women, and most notably, Rabbi Stephen Wise. Defending WNYC, Wise, a leading Zionist who headed the American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) and the World Jewish Congress (WJC), wrote that "absurdly enough, it has been charged with anti-Semitism—as if Arabs and Jews alike were not Semites."4 The episode says much about American Jewish perceptions of Arabs, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism. It reveals that the trend of viewing Arab opposition to Zionism as antisemitic has a long history in the United States, predating Israel's creation. Yet it also shows that America's most prominent Jewish organizations did not perceive early Arab critics of Zionism as inherently antisemitic. On the contrary, American Jewish [End Page 103] leaders vigorously pushed back against labeling Arab critics of Zionism as antisemites, a characterization which Wise, arguably the most influential American Zionist of the era, considered absurd. The response of American Jewish groups to the 1937 controversy may come as a surprise given that in recent decades, some of these same organizations have argued that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic and at times have specifically emphasized "Arab" and "Muslim" forms of antisemitism.5 In seeking to understand the origins of this rhetoric, scholars have focused on the emergence of the term "the new anti-Semitism" in the 1970s. Daniel Schroeter writes that in the aftermath of the 1967 war, advocates for Israel "alarmed at what they saw as growing sympathy for the Arabs and Palestinians began to use the term 'new anti-Semitism,' which they understood as antisemitism either expressed or disguised as anti-Zionism." Central to the "new anti-Semitism," Schroeter continues, "was Arab hostility to Israel and the Jews ('Arab anti-Semitism'), as well as Western support for the Arabs and Palestinians."6 The 1974 book The New Anti-Semitism by Anti-Defamation League (ADL) leaders Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein gave a name to the concept.7 "Islamic anti-Semitism" soon became part of the "new anti-Semitism" discourse as Islamism ascended in Middle Eastern politics.8 Some began portraying Muslims' opposition to Zionism as part of a long history of anti-Jewish feelings within Islam dating back to the medieval era, drawing from what Mark Cohen has termed the "neo-lachrymose conception of Jewish-Arab history," a revisionist narrative that emphasized the mistreatment of Jews in Islamic lands. According to Cohen and Schroeter, this "neo-lachrymose conception" had been developed in part to rebut [End Page 104] Arab advocates' claims that Zionism had ruined an otherwise idyllic history of Jewish-Muslim relations.9 Yet while the 1970s marked the creation of the term "the new anti-Semitism," the first crucial shift in American Jewish discourse on the connection between Arabs, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism came much earlier, not long after the WNYC controversy. Throughout the interwar period (1918-1941), American Jewish organizations generally downplayed Arab discontent with Jews and Zionism, preferring not to categorize it as antisemitism. But even when these same organizations began vocally condemning Arab anti-Zionist advocates in the 1940s and 1950s, they did so without characterizing their anti-Zionism as inherently antisemitic. Instead, these Jewish groups called attention to collaboration between Arab anti-Zionists and non-Arab domestic antisemitic groups, critiquing Arab advocates not for their Middle East agenda but for their alleged threat to Jews in the United States. Only after...

THE ORIGINS OF THE US PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON’S PRO-ISRAELI SYMPATHY, 1908-1948

The purpose of this study is to identify the origins of the pro-Israeli affections of the prominent American politician Lyndon Baines Johnson (the President of the United States in 1963-1968) in the initial period of his political career before winning the Senate elections in 1948. The study resulted in conclusion that preferences of Lyndon Johnson towards Israel were influenced by a number of factors. First of all, this was the influence of the views that had developed in the family of an American politician. His grandfather and aunt were active members of the Christodelphian community, in which the protection of the Jews as God’s chosen people was one of the principles of life. Lyndon’s father, Samuel Ealy Johnson, jr. always tried to take the side of the oppressed and persecuted people. Because of this, Lyndon’s father received threats against him from the Ku Klux Klan. We should also note the role of Lyndon Johnson’s encirclement at the dawn of his political career. A number of prominent American Zionists stood out in this encirclement. In addition, the life attitudes and values of the future 36th US president coincided with the philosophy and experience of the founders of the State of Israel, from side of its leaders as well as from the side of ordinary citizens, soldiers and farmers. Being raised on the Texas frontier and admired for examples of bravery and courage, Johnson felt justified in Israel’s willingness to use force at any moment. Lyndon Johnson’s words and deeds were never at variance. He personally took part in saving the lives of Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. Though, their number, apparently, was not as large as it is sometimes presented in publicist and even historical papers.

Introduction

Introduction Natan Aridan and Ofer Shiff The following group of articles marks the 70th anniversary of a crucial dialog which took place between then Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, and Jacob Blaustein, President of the American Jewish Committee, on August 23, 1950. By way of introduction we have chosen to compare two texts: an English translation of Nathan Alterman's "The New Pumbedita", and the full exchange between Ben-Gurion and Blaustein. "The New Pumbedita" was published about a month before this exchange on July 28, 1950, as part of Alterman's weekly op-ed called "The Seventh Column". Alterman's verse-form op-eds were regular features in the Friday edition of the daily paper Davar, the mouthpiece of Israel's ruling Labor Party.1 Although he never held an official office, Alterman was highly influential in Israeli politics, and often expressed ideological views akin to those of Ben-Gurion.2 In "The New Pumbedita" he echoed Ben-Gurion's opposition to forms of Zionism that do not hold Aliyah (immigration to Israel) as their ultimate goal. Alterman disdained American Zionists who did not fulfill this fundamental tenet of Zionism and expressed his views of them sardonically in the closing lines of "The New Pumbedita", as "pseudo-profound" ideologues who "strive to advocate why they shouldn't immigrate." Ben-Gurion had voiced similar criticisms in his September 1, 1949 statement to a Histadrut delegation from the United States, urging American Jewish parents to send their children to Israel, and implying that Israel might lure their children away against their wishes.3 Given these remarks, Ben-Gurion's declared position in the exchange with Blaustein is quite startling. Instead of prioritizing Aliyah to Israel, the ultimate message of Ben-Gurion's declaration was the recognition that it is incumbent on American Jews to pledge their civic allegiance to the United States and that the decision to immigrate to Israel must be made entirely on an individual basis. [End Page 1] The Jews of the United States, as a community and as individuals, have only one political attachment and that is to the United States of America. They owe no political allegiance to Israel … the decision as to whether they [American Jews] wish to come [to Israel]—permanently or temporarily—rests with the free discretion of each American Jew himself. It is entirely a matter of his own volition.4 The apparent contradictions regarding Aliyah in "The New Pumbedita" and the Ben-Gurion-Blaustein exchange have intrigued researchers attempting to analyze and decipher Ben-Gurion's motivation 70 years later. However, rather than review the authors' hypotheses in the current issue or presume to offer our own, we shall seek their research questions through a comparison of "The New Pumpedita" and the text of Ben-Gurion's exchange with Blaustein. The first question to draw our attention concerns the different audiences addressed by the two texts. "The New Pumbedita" addresses American Zionist leaders and thinkers and opens with a pseudo-quote from an American Zionist credo to the effect that American Jewry plays a role in the Diaspora comparable to that of Pumpedita, the Talmudic center of Babylonia. This view was shared, with variations, by eminent American Zionist thinkers and leaders like Shimon Ravidowitz, Mordecai Kaplan and Abba Hillel Silver. Alterman depicted this American Zionist belief as an apologetic attempt to justify "why they [American Zionists] shouldn't immigrate [to Israel]." Ben-Gurion, in the exchange with Blaustein, addressed himself to a very different audience—American non-Zionist Jews, represented in his eyes by the American Jewish Committee and its President, Jacob Blaustein. A significant proportion of the research concerning the exchange, including that presented in the articles that follow, attribute great significance to the different identities of the two intended audiences, with a focus on Ben-Gurion's attitudes to them. A critical reading of "The New Pumbedita" may cast doubt on some of the assumptions shared by researchers vis-à-vis the distinction between Zionists and non-Zionists in the eyes of Alterman and Ben-Gurion. It is of course arguable that the criticism of American Zionism in "The New Pumbedita" was part of a wider advocacy...

Avukah

The landscape of American Zionism shifted slowly and significantly over the course of the early to mid 20th century, culminating in the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. In that tumultuous period of history, American Zionism was not one single traceable ideology, but a great mass of intersecting and opposing ideologies, formed by American Jews’ desire to assimilate and their response to ongoing and pervasive anti-Semitism in the United States and Europe. One particular student Zionist organization, known as Avukah, cultivated its own Zionist ideology and attempted to spread its message to universities across the country. However, as American Zionism transformed and took root in mainstream American Jewish society, Avukah struggled and ultimately failed to instill its Zionist ideology into the mainstream. Avukah’s strict adherence to a singular, yet ultimately unclear Zionist ideology and its inability to adapt to the shifting tides of American Zionism provide a unique lens into the world of early American Zionist culture and the limitations of organizations founded on strict adherence to ideology. The study of Avukah’s rise and fall through the prism of the Avukah chapter at Temple University offers a close examination and microcosm of the limitations of Avukah’s Zionist ideology in the face of American Zionism’s period of great change.

Władza, przywództwo i siła polityczna w amerykańskim ruchu syjonistycznym w latach 1914-1920. W stulecie ustanowienia Brytyjskiego Mandatu Palestyny

World War I marked the beginning of a significant role of American Jewry in global affairs. Both the emergence of the United States as the new world power and the financial status of the Jewish American community contributed to a considerable participation of American Jews in the councils of world Jewry. The war and its aftermath brought fundamental changes to the Zionist movement, which offered the pragmatic approach to the actual problems of Diaspora Jews. There appeared both the necessity and possibility for uniting all the American Zionist factions into a powerful organization with an efficient party apparatus and prominent leadership which revitalized the Zionist movement and made it responsive to its main aim, i.e., the establishment of the Jewish Homeland in Palestine. Louis D. Brandeis’s leadership marked a turning point in the history of American Zionism through a combination of his potent personality with a coherent ideology that reflected the American conditions. All those developments helped create the most powerful American Zionist organization in the world, with the sole aim to effectually implement the idea of a home for the Jewish people. The Americanization of Zionism, based on practical work in building up Palestine, was a direct reason for a bitter conflict between Brandeis and Weizmann, the leader of European Zionism, that is between fostering Jewish settlement in Palestine through a systematic and methodical economic process on the one hand, and through implementing a synthesis of socio-ethical and cultural values that Zionism in Weizmann’s view should represent, on the other. The article discusses the circumstances which triggered the American Zionist movement to assume power, prestige, and large following; it also analyzes the reasons for an orchestrated and determined diplomatic action on the part of both the Zionist Organization of America and the World Zionist Organization to articulate and achieve their direct aim first through the Balfour Declaration and then through the San Remo Conference decision of entrusting the Mandate over Palestine to Great Britain. They both proved to have been the indispensable prerequisites for the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine.