American Zionism Research Articles

Between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: The Place of Jerusalem in the Weltanschauung of Three American Zionist Leaders

This article examines American Zionist leaders' positions on the Jerusalem issue, taking into consideration that from the 1920s until 1948, they acted within the Zionist movement as an independent political force that sought to play an active role in shaping the Yishuv and the State of Israel according to their own worldview. Their position on Jerusalem included recognition of its significance in Jewish history and the necessity of consolidating Jewish nationalism in Palestine. Yet they demonstrated a clear preference for social and economic patterns that, they maintained, had consolidated in Tel Aviv as a counterbalance to Jerusalem.

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

Struggle for cooperation and integration: American Zionists and Arab oil, 1940s

From the late 1930s, American Jewry grew in prominence within the international Jewish framework and the Zionist movement. This was a natural consequence of the rising importance of the United States with its increased involvement in the Middle East, and the crisis of European Jewry that reached its tragic climax in the Holocaust. An examination of political events in the Zionist movement in Palestine and in the international arena reveals the intense involvement of American Zionists between the 1930s and the founding of Israel in 1948. After the Holocaust and perceiving the chance to realize Zionist aims, American Jews in general, and members of the Zionist movement in particular, had an exceptional opportunity to enlist American Jewry into the Zionist cause.' The leadership of the American Zionist movement was not content to serve Zionism and the Jewish community in Palestine economically and politically. They also tried to use the window of opportunity to influence the development and structure of the future Jewish national home, and the manner in which a Jewish state would fit into the Middle East. The central role of American Zionists, they felt, obliged them to confront key questions that would arise with the war's end, and, most importantly, the place of the future Jewish state in its geographical region. Documents indicate that the American Zionist leaders went beyond the question of Jewish-Arab relations: they proposed plans that dealt with such questions as water, the future refugee problem, regional economic cooperation and the role of international organizations in the Middle East, with a view to assuring JewishArab coexistence and cooperation. These American Zionist attempts to influence Jewish-Arab relations met with strenuous opposition from David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Zionist executive at the time and the most important leader of the Jewish community in Palestine. In the end, Jewish-Arab relations were determined by the Zionist establishment in Palestine in accordance with political and social realities that developed there, and were altogether different from the ideas expressed in American Zionist plans. Just how deeply American Zionism was involved in the future of the Middle East and attempted to influence events in Palestine is apparent in relation to the oil issue in the 1940s, especially in the latter half of the decade, when political activity leading to Israel's establishment intensified.2 The mounting importance of oil for the Allied war effort and the American economy caused the United States to be increasingly involved in the Middle East. The American Zionist establishment felt obliged to try to influence the patterns of that involvement. Documents of American

American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise (review)

Reviewed by: American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise Donna Robinson Divine (bio) Shulamit Reinharz and Mark A. Raider, editors, American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise, Brandeis University Press and University Press of New England, 2005, 373 pp. Two Large, Seemingly Antagonistic Missions, the first regarding the American dream for all 'the huddled masses yearning to breathe free,' and the second embodied in Zionism's vision of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, emerged from the bloodshed and suffering of World War I to foster a remarkable set of opportunities for Jewish women living in the United States. Through a paradox that seems incomprehensible, Zionism, itself, helped convince most Americans that the central reason for its existence—the insecurity of life for Jews living in the Diaspora—did not apply to the United States. While helping Jews in Palestine, American Zionists seemed to forfeit their own condition of exile. Much of the compelling force of the Zionist vision comes from its rejection of other alternatives for Jewish survival. The Balfour Declaration and its subsequent incorporation into the League of Nations Mandate that set the terms for British rule in Palestine appeared, to Zionists, to render the national home as the climatic fulfillment of Jewish history. American Jews, however, could not help but see in their own homeland so many promises, so many opportunities, and so many rewards for energy that they could not conceive of having to seek liberation beyond their own shores. Shulamit Reinharz and Mark Raider's magnificent study, American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise challenges us to understand how faith in Zionism and in the American dream nourished and changed the meaning of both projects. This is a story not of ideologies or for the most part, of ideologues, but rather of the creators of a new tradition. The essays in this collection bring some of the leaders of Hadassah, Pioneer Women, and of Mizrachi beautifully to life and show how a dedication to the Zionist cause deepened a commitment to American values, and enlarged the Zionist perspective, to preserve a set of liberal principles reaching across [End Page 204] the ethnic and national divide in Palestine even in the worst of times and raging communal violence. Reinharz and Raider are as qualified as anyone today to put together this history. Both have written as knowledgeably about American Zionism as about the lives of Jewish women. In this book, Reinharz and Raider assemble essays that chart the rich profusion of movements, institutions, and activities—including Aliyah—that Zionism inspired in Jewish women living in the United States. "Although the number of American Zionists who actually immigrated to Palestine was never large, the number of Jewish women who subscribed to the Zionist cause was significant." (p. XXII) So much of the Zionist enterprise encouraged collective action that we forget how often and surprisingly it also created the context for individuality, where the particular deeds of ordinary women could affect the course of history. Many of the women described in the pages of this collection lived more dangerously, made themselves at home under more political volcanoes, and looked deeper into more social abysses, than most American women of their class and age. This book helps us to see the complexities and ironies in the lives of Jewish women who developed the Zionist movement in America and to think about them in radically new ways. An incomparable body of research by historians in recent years is beginning to show how the very existence of women's Zionist organizations served to forge a distinctive consciousness among their members that became one important source of the movement's historic potency. In 1925, for example, both the centrist Organization of America (ZOA) and Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, had countrywide memberships of approximately 27,000. A decade later the ZOA membership had dropped to less than 17,000 while Hadassah (which declined somewhat during the Depression) rose to approximately 33,000. Thereafter Hadassah's membership trajectory stayed well ahead of the ZOA except for a brief period on the eve of statehood when the ZOA attained parity with Hadassah and reached its peak strength of 250,000. (p. XX...

American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise (review)

Reviewed by: American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise Pamela S. Nadell (bio) Shulamit Reinharz and Mark A. Raider (eds.) American Jewish Women and the Zionist EnterpriseWaltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005 On November 29, 1948, Hebrew University student Zipporah Porath wrote home to New York: I can't believe this year. So much has happened, but the most important thing by far is the birth of the state. I've been part of it and it will forever be part of me. I guess that means I am telling you I intend to see this war through and then remain on, whatever happens. This is now my home. (p. 362) These words close a valuable collection documenting, for the first time, the range of American women's contributions to Zionism. Following Brandeis University's 1999 conference "Untold Stories: American Jewish Women in the Yishuv and Early State of Israel" (convened to mark Israel's fiftieth anniversary), sociologist Shulamit Reinharz, a pioneering figure in women's studies, teamed up with historian Mark A. Raider, author of The Emergence of American Zionism (1998), to edit the proceedings. What began as a publication of conference papers wisely evolved into a far more significant book. In compiling American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise, the editors added an array of primary and secondary sources, a number of them previously published, to extend their historical sweep, reaching back to the pre-Herzlian Zionism of Emma Lazarus and forward to the prime ministership of Golda Meir. By bringing all these together in a single volume, they dramatically convey the range and depth of American women's Zionist involvements, commitments, and activities. [End Page 250] The book, which is divided into four sections, opens with portraits of three visionaries: Emma Lazarus (by Arthur Zeiger, first published in 1958), Henrietta Szold (by Allon Gal), and Marie Syrkin (by Carole Kessner, also previously published). Accompanying their portraits are excerpts from their writings: Emma Lazarus's poem "The Banner of the Jew," a letter by Henrietta Szold, and a 1947 essay advocating partition by Marie Syrkin. By publishing these women's intellectual contributions to the development of Zionism alongside each other, the editors demonstrate that women were not only Zionist activists but also shapers of the Zionist idea. These and the other original voices included in the book's final section, "Women Report and Remember: Documentary Portraits," make for compelling reading. In addition to Zipporath Porath's spellbinding account of the siege of Jerusalem during the War of Independence, the documentary portraits include Golda Meir's record of her astonishment at having to prove her value to Kibbutz Merhavyah, and Ruth Halprin Kaslove's memories of her mother, Hadassah president Rose Luria Halprin, whose activism propelled her, in the 1930s, to move her family to Palestine and from there to travel to Berlin for Youth Aliyah, where she was spied upon by the Gestapo. In another memoir, Lois Slott recounts her insider's view, from her perch as a stenotypist (a job one might have to explain to undergraduates) for the American Section of the Jewish Agency, of the dramas leading up to the new nation's birth and of the young men scurrying around the U.S. buying up arms for the coming war. These captivating voices enrich the collection, not only for a general audience but especially for students, who may well find it assigned in modern Jewish history classes. They will also benefit from the useful time line tabulating landmark dates in the history of American Jewish women, Zionist affairs, American and world Jewish affairs, and general world history, to which, in the interest of full disclosure, I note that I contributed. The book's second section considers an array of American Jewish women's Zionist organizations. Going beyond the best known of the women's Zionist organizations, Hadassah (analyzed by Mary McCune for its membership success and by Mira Katzburg-Yungman for its early contributions to the Yishuv), the volume includes essays on Mizrachi Women, Pioneer Women, Hadassah-WIZO Canada, and the International Council of Jewish Women. The inclusion of religious and socialist groups underscores the diversity of women's Zionist activism and demands...

Nursing Education Moves Into the University: The Story of the Hadassah School of Nursing in Jerusalem, 1918–1984

The acceptance of nursing as a profession taught in universities reflects basic changes in the essence of nursing as a vocation. The characteristics of university-level education include a specific and unique body of knowledge, entrance requirements, training requirements for practice, and a maximum of autonomy. These factors are shaping the status of nursing in the academic community, health services, and society at large. In 1918, the members of the American Zionist Medical Unit (AZMU) from New York (which later became the Hadassah Medical Organization [HMO] in Jerusalem), headed by Henrietta Szold, founded the Hadassah School of Nursing in Jerusalem and brought about a revolution in nursing in the country. The school awarded 1,400 Registered Nurse diplomas from 1921 to 1975, the year the university school of nursing opened.1 The idea of offering a university nursing education arose as early as the 1920s. In 1975, Hadassah, a pioneer and role model in health services in Israel, focused on introducing the first basic university curriculum for nurses. This article describes the transformation of nursing into an academically grounded profession, and the social and ideological context in which the transformation occurred, first under the British Mandate for Palestine (1918-1948) and then in die State of Israel (hereafter Israel) up to 1984. It augments the work of Lea Zwanger and Rivka Adams-Stockier.2 It is based on interviews with eighteen personalities significant in the transformation of nursing education, die memoirs of one of die coauthors (Judith Steiner-Freud), archival documents, and the professional literature.3 Europe has only a few university-level nursing programs. European university nursing education was only inaugurated in Britain in the 1930s, Germany in the 1960s, Austria and the Netherlands in the 1980s, and Switzerland in the 1990s.4 The movement of nursing education into universities in early twentieth century United States is therefore especially relevant to contemporary developments in pre-Israel Palestine and Israel.5 In the early decades of the twentieth century, American institutions of higher education were modifying their goals and adapting themselves to the needs of society by encouraging applied knowledge, new fields of study, and students from a wide range of social classes.6 As a women's profession, however, nursing had more difficulty than other fields due to colleges' reluctance to admit women; opposition by doctors' organizations, which were worried about possible harm to the status of physicians; and the question of whether nursing was a field worthy of study in an academic setting.7 This is the context of the struggle of leading nurses such as Isabel A. Hampton-Robb, Lavinia L. Dock, Lillian Wald, Adelaide Nutting, and Isabel Stewart. The American literature describes three trends in collegiate nursing education in this period:8 (1) an independent nursing school in a university, as at Yale; (2) studies in a college setting combined with a diploma track in a school of nursing, as at the Universities of Michigan and California and Northwestern University; (3) continuing university education programs in nursing for nurses who had completed the basic requirements for a diploma or baccalaureate degree, as at Teachers College, Columbia University. All three models were recognized and eventually partly adopted in Israel. In American society, the economics of hospital based nurses' training and the need for nurses' labor were among the main obstacles to making nursing education an academic pursuit at the university level.9 This argument has also been very important in Israel, a financially strained society that concentrates its resources on building itself-a society in need of working hands. In fact, according to Judith T. Shuval and Ofra Anson, efforts in Israel to convert nursing into a profession that requires a university degree may be described in terms of political struggle. …

MONTY NOAM PENKOWER, Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain and Wartime Diplomacy 1939–1945, Cass Series: Israeli History, Politics and Society (London: Frank Cass, 2002). Pp. 397. $62.50 cloth.

Monty Noam Penkower has written a detailed and documented account of the diplomatic relations of American, British, and Palestine-based Zionists with the American and British governments from 1939 to 1945. His theme is that these governments showed a callous disregard for the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust because they refused free immigration into Palestine. The author's scholarship is sound in terms of the people and diplomacy with which he deals. The probable audience for the book is scholars and researchers who are interested in the history of the Holocaust and the response to it by both the Allied powers and Zionist leaders, as well as those interested in the origins of the Israeli state. However, the events covered in this work are explicitly tied to Palestine and its fate, and in that regard the author has produced only a “half history.” Penkower's treatment of Palestine is incomplete because the subject of the Palestinian Arabs, who bear the consequences of the negotiations, planning, and conspiring that the work details are mentioned only in passing and then almost always in negative terms. It is as if one were to write the history of Nazi planning for the Holocaust and only rarely and disapprovingly mention Jews.

Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy (review)

Reviewed by: Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy Lawrence Davidson Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy, by Kathleen Christison. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 370 pp. $40.00. American Jews have a big problem which they tend to deny. Reading this book can help bring that problem to consciousness and, perhaps for some, be the first step to a positive resolution. The problem is one of contradiction. Their own history has taught many American Jews the moral, as well as political, necessity and rightness of guaranteeing full human, civil, and political rights to minorities. Such an understanding has led them, until recent times, to unite with other minorities, both nationally and internationally, in a struggle to secure these rights. It has taught them that war, national chauvinism, and religious intolerance only lead to the oppression of minorities who, historically, have often been Jews. In contradiction to this lesson, however, American Jews support Zionist policies that have systematically deprived Palestinians of their land and rights, have supported Israeli laws that reduce non-Jews to second-class citizenship, have supported Israeli acts of conquest, and reveled in Jewish national chauvinism. They have compounded this contradictory behavior by (inaccurately) promoting Israel as “an American style democracy” in the Middle East, and drawing parallels between Zionist colonization and the American pioneer experience. So aggressive and persuasive have American Zionist leaders been in this effort that they have not only convinced themselves that there is nothing amiss with this stand, but have successfully converted most other Americans to their point of view. All of this is possible because most American Jews either deny, explain away, or just refuse to consider the contradictions that underlie their support of Zionism and the behavior of the Israeli state. If one could only get them to read Kathleen Christison’s book one might hope that a crisis of conscience would result. In her well written and organized work Christison shows how Americans, Jews and non-Jews, were transformed into Zionists. The book details the evolution of a mind-set that led Americans to see Palestine as an extension of the Judeo-Christian West. For Americans, the real Palestine was the Palestine of the Bible. Muslim occupation was illegitimate and had led to the ruination of the land of milk and honey. This biblical frame of reference also [End Page 140] made the “Holy Land” appear as the logical sanctuary for European Jews (who were pictured as the modern-day descendents of biblical Jews—something like equating today’s Greeks with the Athenians of Plato’s time) seeking to escape antisemitism. And while escaping antisemitism, the Jews could rebuild, and redeem, Palestine in the Western image. The same point of view reduced the indigenous Muslim population of Palestine to barbarians of no account. In other words, Christison shows that Zionism was part of late nineteenth-and twentieth-century Western imperialism. Christison details the power of this mind-set by laying out the history of the bonding relationship between American Zionists and U.S. politicians, civic and religious leaders, business and labor, and the media. Taking the story from 1917 to the present, she shows how the Zionist ideology, as presented by American Zionists, seemed to meld with American ideology and self-image until the two became almost inseparable. A key practical factor here was the Zionist leaders’ mastery of the American system of interest group politics. While Christison does a superb job in telling this story, she does not consider the moral implications for American Jewry of Zionist success. Chaim Weizmann once told the leaders of the allied coalition that won World War I that Zionism aimed at the creation of a state that would be Jewish just like England is English. In other words, Jews should be made “normal,” and “like everyone else,” in a world of nation states. And indeed, the Zionists have succeeded in this goal. In so doing, however, they have done great harm to Jewish moral and ethical positions, at least as traditionally understood by American Jewry. The leaders of nation states and their patriotic supporters are notorious for just that sort of hypocritical...

Isaac Max Rubinow: advocate for social insurance.

A pioneer of the American social security movement, Isaac Max Rubinow (1875–1936) emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1893. A member of a relatively comfortable Jewish family, he was able to attend and graduate from Columbia University and New York University Medical School. He then practiced medicine for 5 years among poor immigrants in New York City’s Lower East Side, an experience that taught him about the effects of poverty on health and turned his attention to the field of social insurance. In 1900, while still in medical practice, Rubinow began part-time graduate study at Columbia University in economics, statistics, and sociology. In 1903 he left medicine for full-time employment in Washington, DC, in a succession of federal bureaus and agencies. Rubinow soon emerged as America’s leading authority on social insurance and the expert author of comprehensive studies on current practices in Europe. A 1904 article in the Journal of Political Economy1 was “the first publication by an American to call unequivocally for social insurance.”2 A few years later, Rubinow contributed to a major study undertaken by the US Department of Commerce and Labor on “Workmen’s Insurance and Compensation Systems in Europe.” This well-over-2000-page study was published in 2 large volumes as the Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor 1909.3 In 1913, Rubinow published Social Insurance, With Special Reference to American Conditions, the first and definitive American textbook on the subject.4 Figure Courtesy of the Isaac M. Rubinow Papers, Kheel Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Also active in various political and reform movements during America’s Progressive Era, Rubinow was a member of the American Association of Labor Legislation (AALL) from its formation in 1906. In the early 1910s, he was one of the most effective advocates for workmen’s compensation legislation. Inspired by the success of that movement, in 1913 he turned with other AALL leaders to what Dr Rupert Blue, president of the American Medical Association (AMA), called “health insurance—the next great step in social legislation.”5 The AMA joined the campaign and appointed Rubinow executive secretary of its newly created Committee on Social Insurance. Rubinow worked tirelessly in this position until, in early 1917, the AMA, in a sharp reversal, cut off funds to the committee. After several short-term positions and a 4-year stint as head of the American Zionist Medical Unit in Palestine, Rubinow returned to the United States in 1923 and made a new career in the world of Jewish philanthropy and social service.6 Between 1925 and 1929, he also edited the Jewish Social Service Quarterly and in 1927 became vice president of the American Association for Old-Age Security.7 In this position and others, he led efforts in the late 1920s and early 1930s to create unemployment and old age insurance. In 1931, Rubinow chaired an important conference in Chicago whose purpose was to draw up a unified program of legislation for old age. Early in the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Rubinow to express “great interest” in his suggestions. When the president appointed the Committee on Economic Security in the summer of 1934 to advise on drafting the Social Security Act, Rubinow served as a consultant.8

America's Palestine: popular and official perceptions from Balfour to Israeli statehood

In a revisionist look at the history of U.S. relations with Palestine, Lawrence Davidson offers a critical study of the evolution of American popular and governmental perceptions of Zionism and Palestine, from the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the founding of Israel in 1948. Zionism, which sought to transform Palestine into a Jewish state, emphasized the biblical and religious connections of the West to Palestine. Davidson argues that this orientation predisposed the American people to see Zionism as a form of altruistic imperialism that would bring civilization to a backward part of the world. However, American Zionists met resistance from the State Department, particularly the Division of Near Eastern Affairs, whose neutral stance until 1945 was shaped by a fear of foreign entanglements. Exploring rising tensions on both sides, Davidson describes how the American Zionists overcame this resistnace and outmaneuvered the State Department by using lobbying techniques and appeals to popular sentiment. Showing how a powerful and determined interest group turned the U.S. political system to its advantage and shaped foreign policy, America's Palestine is an important study of one of the 20th century's most controversial international stories.

Orientalism in America during the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century: Portrayals of Marriage Guides

This study challenges Edward Said and examines the nature of America's Orientalism, focusing on marriage guides during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Three marriage guides that represent the three modalities of this period the medical, the religious, and the pseudo-scientific—reveal that American Orientalism portrayed Europe as well as the Arabs, Islam, the Africans, and the American Indians as the others. Rendering others in these marriage guides took the form of bestowing unique but distorted types of femininity upon the Orient and Europe. In particular, physical deformities, abnormalities in women's sexual organs, the moral corruption of women, and influences on woman's bodies that hindered the preservation of pure American race, were emphasized to signify the characteristics of the Orient. American Orientalism determined the characteristics of American women as well as those of the Orient, justifying the inferiority of both. The examination of marriage guides reveals that American Orientalism was neither a mere extension of European Orientalism, nor a product of American Zionism. It was rather a product of the formation of American identity, whereby non-mainstream persons had to be first defined as others, so as to define the mainstream.

The Emergence of American Zionism

The Emergence of American Zionism

Are We One?: Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel (review)

Reviewed by: Are We One?: Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel Charles S. Liebman Are We One?: Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel. By Jerold S. Auerbach. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001. 248 pp. Jerold Auerbach is a distinguished historian. An earlier book Rabbis and Lawyers reflects not only impeccable scholarship but very keen observations on American Jewish life. If I'm not mistaken, I reviewed it when it appeared and had nothing but praise for it. I do recall assigning big chunks of it to classes I once taught on American Jewish life. Hence it is with some surprise that I found his present study unsettling. Auerbach's new book, Are We One?, is an extended historical essay without footnotes but with a scholarly appendix. Like his previous work the argument is clear and well written. I would summarize it as follows. American Jews are driven by fears of being charged with dual loyalty. The only way American Zionist leaders could render Zionism palatable was to reinterpret it and eradicate the contradictions between Zionist and American values, spinning a "seamless web of unity and harmony in which underlying conflicts...are all but eradicated" (p. 24). Zionism and later on the state of Israel itself were interpreted as the realization of American liberalism. But liberalism, so attractive to American Jews, is really "a strategy of assimilation" (p. 207). As long as Israel could be interpreted as the embodiment of American liberal values, American [End Page 243] Jews could support Israel. By implication, when Israel strayed so far from these values that American Jews could no longer interpret Israeli behavior as consonant with American liberalism, support waned. Zionism, that is the real Zionism, despite its particularist elements, is in basic conflict with the Jewish tradition by seeking to "normalize" the lives of the Jewish people. The reality of Israel's security concerns, the threats and attacks by its neighbors rendered normalization impossible until most recently. The turning point was the period following the Six Day and the Yom Kippur Wars. Instead of choosing the path of Jewish tradition and Jewish particularism at a point in time when it seemed most possible, Israeli leaders strove for normalization which includes, in addition to the adoption of western consumerist culture, the unrealistic effort to normalize relations with the Palestinians. Israel, in the 1980s but increasingly in the 1990s has entered a post-Zionist phase in which both the Zionist past and the Jewish tradition are subjects of calumny. Verbal attacks on the religious tradition and on religious Jews are nothing short of antisemitic. Only the religious Zionists, the West Bank settlers in general and the Hebron settlers in particular, emerge as positive figures in Auerbach's essay because only they assert the values of both Judaism and Zionist particularism. I have qualms about the narrative, but this isn't what troubles me most. Before I turn to that which troubles me, I feel obliged to assert some of my specific caveats. First, while Auerbach is probably right about the inherent tension between Zionism and the Jewish tradition, he leaves no room for the evolution of a tradition (in this respect he is really adopting a post-Zionist position), nor does he acknowledge that given his conception of the tradition there can be no viable Jewish state. Second, unlike Auerbach, I have no sympathy whatsoever for the Hebron settlers. Third, in my opinion, the underlying relationship between American Jews and Israel has relatively little to do with Israeli policy. The problem in American Jewish relations to Israel is not opposition to Israeli policy. Criticism and opposition demonstrate concern whether it comes from the left over the "Who is a Jew?" issue or from the right over opposition to the Oslo Accord. The problem is the growing indifference of American Jews to Israel. Fourth, I don't think that American Jews are driven by fears they will be charged with dual loyalty. That was a palpable fear in the past. Auerbach gives insufficient credit to the confidence that American Jews have in their status as Americans. Fifth, while I agree that the underlying values of liberalism threaten Jewish survival...

The Emergence of American Zionism

The Emergence of American Zionism

Herbert Hoover and American Jewish non-Zionists, 1917-28

In 1967, retired Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, a lifelong friend and trusted confidant of Herbert Hoover, offered a postmortem appraisal of the president's racial attitudes: "He appreciated talent. He didn't care whether the man who had it was of his political persuasion. He was [End Page 377] absolutely color-blind as to race, and he didn't care anything about denomination." 2 Granted, this strong endorsement of Hoover's weltanschauung as one untainted with the ignorance of bigotry and racism did come from a close friend, but it was also based on years of experience and cooperation with Hoover in humanitarian and relief efforts. Hoover's attitude on race, 3 particularly his views on Jews, has received little attention from biographers, and the overall consensus is not favorable. While revisionist historians have successfully rehabilitated the damaged persona of Hoover by stressing his organizational genius and humanitarian progressivism, the prevailing opinion of Hoover's racial views holds that he did not rise above the prejudice of his time. [End Page 378] Even Donald J. Lisio concedes that the Chief's encounter with racism is "the tragic yet instructive tale of a good man who insisted that he was color-blind but could not even see and understand the racism that engulfed him and his society." 4 The following examination of Hoover's record on Jewish relations is limited in scope to his years of public service between 1917 and 1928. Based on one chapter of a doctoral thesis that deals with the ambiguity and ambivalence surrounding both American Zionism and the actions of the Hoover administration, this study tries to ascertain the early relationship patterns between Hoover and the American Jewish community. Hoover lived a long and full life, encompassing an impressive career both as a private citizen and public servant. His relations with the Jewish community were thus varied, depending upon the changing circumstances over time, and can be roughly divided into three phases: the years of public service between 1917 and 1928, the years of Hoover's presidency, and his activities during the post-presidential years. 5 This study is an attempt to address the first phase of the dynamics between Hoover and American Jews and to set the parameters for an evaluation of Hoover's performance on Jewish matters during his presidency. An analysis of Hoover's record on Jewish relations between 1917 and 1928 defies simple explanations and must be understood within the confines of ideology, politics, and culture. Hoover's Quaker mentality and engineering background prepared him well for American relief efforts overseas and defined his cooperation with Jewish relief organizations. Hoover cultivated relations with the non-Zionist, highly assimilated and largely German-Jewish leadership of American Jewry that seemed far removed from the masses of recent eastern European immigrants. A common interest in humanitarian work cemented a friendship and political partnership between Hoover and leading members of the American Jewish community like Louis Marshall and Felix Warburg, both wealthy philanthropists and loyal supporters of the [End Page 379] Republican party. Yet, a closer look at Hoover's record on the Jewish question in Poland reveals the inherent tensions between humanitarian concerns and larger foreign policy objectives. Moreover, his near silence on anti-Semitism during the 1920s and his attitude toward Zionism show that the relationship between Hoover and the shtadlanim operated within the parameters of Americanism as much as humanitarianism. Hoover was an ideologue and a visionary, his philosophy of life deeply rooted in his Quaker upbringing and experience as an engineer. He was born in 1874 in West Branch, Iowa, to practicing Quaker parents who imbued young Herbert with the values of their faith. He learned to accept the precepts of hard work, plain living, and honest faith and was deeply influenced by the Quaker sense of harmony and unity of voluntary community cooperation. A cooperative work ethic, whereby all...

Zionism and the Arabs: An American Dilemma, 1898-1948 (review)

162 SHOFAR Winter 1999 Vol. 17, No.2 briefly in several chapters and then not at all. Ultimately, is there any connection or relationship possible between the two different groups ofIsraeli women who inhabit the same nation? Second, the tone ofthe book is often highly critical ofIsraeli women, for their willingness to accept maternalist "public ideas" and their vacillation between nationalism and feminism. Is this a case of blaming the victim for difficulties created by the state? This questions leads into the fmal, and potentially most significant one, for the future of Israeli women in politics. What is the evidence for a new synthesis, in which efforts at both mobilization (working outside the system) and integration (working inside the system) may come together, in an era described by the author as one ofunprecedented change? What can students of other developing, democratic nations learn from the problems and successes of Israeli women in politics? Joyce Gelb Department of Political Science City University ofNew York Zionism and the Arabs: An American Dilemma, 1898-1948, by Raphael Medoff. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997. 188 pp. $55.00. The presence of an Arab majority in Palestine confronted the Zionist movement with a serious political problem from its inception until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Organized political Zionism first appeared in the United States in 1898. It reached the peak ofits strength in the 1940s, when in cooperation with the Palestinian Zionists, it played a decisive role in the struggle to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Like their Palestinian Zionist counterparts, American Zionists faced a serious problem: the existence of an Arab majority in Palestine. Medoff's study, an outgrowth of his dissertation, examines the American Zionist attitude toward the Palestinian Arabs. He argues that through the prism ofthe Arab issue one learns "how American Zionists defmed themselves as Americans and as Jews: how they wrestled with conflicts between their dual identities; how they adjusted to American society while attempting to maintain ethnic loyalties" (p. 161). American Jews, according to Medoff, embraced Zionism only when they became persuaded that their Zionism would not conflict with their Americanism. Louis Brandeis' Americanized Zionism with its stress on philanthropy and help for refugees brought respectability to Zionism. But the issue ofPalestinian Arabs created a serious dilemma for American Zionists. How could they reconcile their American faith in democracy with their support for a Zionist enterprise in Palestine in the face of opposition by the majority ofthe Arab inhabitants ofthe land? Between 1898 and 1948, American Zionism devised a number of ingenious ways to cope with the problem. Before World War I, with no overt Book Reviews 163 organized Arab opposItIon, the question of reconciling the American belief in democracy and support for Zionism was unnecessary. In fact, Zionists harbored romantic notions about the Arabs and minimized Arab opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine. So uninformed about the country and its people were many American Zionists that some described it as "a land without people for a people without a land." Zionist optimism was bolstered by the Balfour Declaration in 1917 with its promise to establish in Palestine "a national home for Jewish people" and reference to the Arab majority ofthe population in the country merely as "existing non-Jewish communities." This was a clear victory for Zionism. Throughout the 1920s, believing that economic progress and philanthropy would assure tranquility in Palestine, American Zionists minimized signs ofArab opposition by blaming outbreaks of violence on corrupt landlords, outside agitators, Christian Arabs, missionaries, and Communists. At the same time, realizing that Jews were a distinct minority and fearing that Arab opposition could threaten the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, American Zionists opposed the creation ofa legislative council in Palestine and thereby rejected democracy. In fact, until 1948 they rejected democracy and supported building up a Jewish majority in Palestine. Only then would democracy be called for. Indeed, until 1929 Arab opposition to Zionism was not taken seriously. In 1929 new and serious violence erupted in Palestine. Again, outsiders were blamed for the hostilities. After the riots, believing it would irreparably damage Zionism, American Zionists once more rejected a'revived call for establishing democracy in Palestine and even talked...

Jerusalem's Hope Lies Only in Partition: Israeli Policy on the Jerusalem Question, 1948–67

In June 1937, David Ben-Gurion explained to one of the leaders of American Zionism why he thought it was right to divide Jerusalem: “England (and we) need control over the holy places—that is, the Old City. [But] ruling over Rehavia [a neighborhood in the city's western part] adds nothing [to Britain], whereas for the Jews, the millions of the Jews who do not know the difference between the Sharon and the [Jezre'el] Valley [or the difference between Rehavia and the Old City] … —the name Jerusalem means everything.”

American Zionism: Mission and Politics. Vol. 8

American Zionism: Mission and Politics. Vol. 8

Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism (review)

148 SHOFAR Summer 1999 Vol. 17, No.4 Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, edited by Mark A. Raider, Jonathan D. Sarna, and Ronald W. Zweig. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 1997. 127 pp. $37.50. In reading Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, the reviewer recalls Thomas Carlyles' statement: "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." As the Jewish world marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, this book is avery timely reminder that in reflecting upon the history of the Zionist movement and the creation of the Jewish state, one cannot overlook the significant accomplishments of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. These collected essays offer the reader a careful and reasoned analysis of such pertinent questions as, "How did Silver's rabbinic career influence his actions as a Zionist leader?" "What was the source of his political strength and skill as a Zionist leader?" and "What impact did Silver have in the struggle to achieve Jewish statehood?" Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver (1893-1963) was not only a forceful and commanding presence in the American rabbinate, but also a dynamic and inspiring orator, a master of the Hebrew language, an intellectual luminary, and an uncommonly eloquent and persuasive voice for Zionism in the halls, not only ofJewish forums, but in Washington, D.C. and the United Nations. In a time when Refonn Judaism was primarily opposed to the aspirations and the principles of Zionism, Silver, as a leading Refonn congregational rabbi, first in Wheeling, West Virginia and then in Cleveland, Ohio, became an ardent champion of Zionism. For Silver, as these essays convincingly posit, there was no incompatibility between being a Refonn Jew and an ardent espouser of Zionism. This is borne out in Mark Raider's essay, "Where American Zionism Differed," in which he quotes Silver, "Zionism is the national effort to restore the lost hannony of Jewish life. It aims at a reconstituted totality of Jewish existence" (p. 93). There is much in Silver's writings and pronouncements that is not dated, even today. Thus, as Hasia Diner's essay, "Zion and America: The Fonnative Visions of Abba Hillel Silver," demonstrates, Silver was greatly concerned by the lack of unity among American Jews. He saw it not only as a political problem, but also as one which indicated the presence ofspiritual torpor in American Jewish life. Silver was profoundly disturbed by the low level of spirituality among American Jews and the absence of a strong interest in Jewish education. One wonders if Silver would have thus been heartened by recent trends in American Judaism indicating a desire on the part of more Jews to fmd increased spirituality and meaning in life and by Refonn Judaism's call for a stronger commitment to Torah study and Jewish learning in general. This reviewer was also struck by the parallel between Silver's call for a "vital Liberal Judaism" in Israel in order to keep alive Israel's spiritual strength and the contemporary struggles within Israel for the equal rights and recognition of nonOrthodox fonns ofJudaism. It was Rabbi Silver who insisted on an indigenous Israeli Book Reviews 149 form ofReform Judaism, when he said, "We cannot import our special brand ofReform Judaism into Israel. Our spiritual apparel may not be suitable raiment for them" (p. 30). However, Michael Meyer, in his essay, "Abba Hillel Silver as Zionist within the Camp of Reform Judaism," correctly points out that Silver was still a classical Reform Jew whose Reform Jewish ideology was very much patterned after prophetic Judaism rather than, as now evidenced within Reform Judaism, increased ritual and tradition. One of the major strengths of this book is its emphasis on the strong connection between American liberalism and Zionism in Silver's life. The influence of the ancient prophets with their clarion call for justice and righteousness was manifested in Silver's assertion, made again and again, that Zionism and liberal democracy are co-partners in giving meaning to people's lives. Thus his impassioned efforts to promote effective prolabor legislation and to further the cause of women suffrage, as well as his espousal of other liberal causes, emanated from...

The emergence of American Zionism

The emergence of American Zionism