Jewish Organizations Research Articles

The Return of Cultural Genocide?

Today, cultural genocide and the protection of cultural groups return to occupy criminal international law. Most writers see it as a new problem in need of normative solution. In this article we suggest that the problem is as old as the concept of genocide itself, and suggest to explore it through the lens of law and history. We argue that the original conceptualization of the crime of genocide-as presented by Raphael Lemkin-gave cultural genocide center stage. The novelty of the Nazi crime lay in the methodical attempt to destroy a group-well beyond typical war crimes and acts of repression-and what makes up a group's identity is its culture. Hence, for Lemkin, the essence of genocide was cultural. Ironically, the final text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide does not prohibit cultural genocide as such. What led to this almost total inversion of the original meaning of genocide, from an encompassing concept of genocide to one limited to its physical and biological aspects? Explaining the riddle of cultural genocide is the aim of this article. It will examine the various junctures of law, politics and history in which the concept was shaped: the original conceptualization by Lemkin; litigation in national and international criminal courts; and the drafting process of the Genocide Convention. Against the dominance of criminal law, we return to the forgotten successful struggle for cultural restitution (books, archives and works of art) fought by Jewish organizations after the Holocaust as a countermeasure to cultural genocide. We show that only by bringing together these various struggles can we recover a robust understanding of cultural genocide, once repressed by international law, and now returns to haunt us by the demands of groups for recognition and protection.

Billy Graham Receives the Ten Commandments: American Jewish Interfaith Relations in the Age of Evangelicalism

Billy Graham Receives the Ten Commandments:American Jewish Interfaith Relations in the Age of Evangelicalism Amy Weiss (bio) On October 28, 1977, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, national director of Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), awarded famed evangelist Billy Graham the organization's first National Interreligious Award. Tanenbaum considered Graham to be "one of the greatest friends of the Jewish people and of Israel in the entire Christian world in the twentieth century," standing he shared with Pope John XXIII and Reinhold Niebuhr.1 The award, later renamed the Isaiah Award for Exemplary Interreligious Leadership to echo the biblical prophet Isaiah's call for social justice, recognized the recipient's support of Israel, opposition to antisemitism, and promotion of interfaith relations.2 In spite of opposition from many liberal American Jews who considered Graham's selection a troubling choice, bestowing the AJC's first interfaith award upon an evangelical Protestant made sense to Rabbi Tanenbaum.3 Since 1969 the AJC had formally partnered with leaders of the theologically conservative Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, to which Graham belonged, to develop greater theological understanding between Jews and evangelicals.4 Graham's frequent public support of Israel, at a time when prominent American Jews and mainline Protestants openly criticized its government and treatment of Palestinians, further endeared him to Tanenbaum.5 [End Page 1] In examining the history of interfaith relations with evangelicals throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, this article argues that Jewish organizations' engagement with conservative Christians established a pattern that has had lasting impact. The AJC and other national Jewish institutions acquired valuable experience in interacting with evangelicals—a religious group that had moved from a subculture to the American mainstream in the postwar period—which they later replicated when engaging with other ethnic and religious blocs entering American politics.6 Indeed the embryonic dialogue established in the years prior to 1977 served as a model for contemporary interfaith relations. Scholars, who tend to focus more on moments of controversy or questions of ideological and political difference, have often overlooked the alliances that Jewish organizations forged with members of the Southern Baptist Convention.7 Examining the nascent stages of this dialogue—especially prior to what has become known as the "Southern Baptist controversy" of 1979 when the conservative faction of this evangelical denomination drove the moderates from power, taking over leadership positions in all of its institutions and seminaries—reveals the influence of theological moderates in the establishment of this interfaith partnership.8 Although frequently understood as a relationship between liberal Jews and conservative Protestants, a more nuanced assessment of this early dialogue shows that the interlocutors from both SBC and Jewish groups constituted more liberal elements of their respective denomination and organizations, a feature that facilitated interfaith relations. Recent scholarship has investigated the history of Jewish-evangelical dialogue from a range of different perspectives. Whereas American evangelicals' assessments of Jews and Judaism has received consideration, less emphasis has been placed on American Jews' own attitudes towards theologically conservative Protestants.9 Even less attention has [End Page 2] been directed towards Jewish communal organizations' relations with evangelicals, despite the leading roles played by these organizations in facilitating dialogue and in offering guidance to local clergy and lay leaders about duplicating these efforts in their own communities.10 Past scholarly work has attributed evangelicals' interest in Jews to intertwined theological and geopolitical concerns including missionizing, Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.11 The study of American Jewish-evangelical relations in the decade prior to 1979 shows that while Israel and conversion mattered deeply to American Jewish organizations, they focused their interfaith dialogue on political interests that were at times complementary and at other points contradictory to SBC pursuits such as abortion, religious freedom, and church-state separation issues. These conflicting political positions were precisely why major national Jewish communal organizations, including the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, opposed the religious right's assertion that "Christianity and America are synonymous."12 Jewish organizations hesitantly endorsed dialogue with evangelicals, yet remained skeptical of evangelicals' conservative sociopolitical values. Like most American Jews, the AJC and ADL embraced liberalism, often aligning with like...

The Paths of Books of Latvian Jews during World War II

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian]
 The aim of the research is to find out the influence of the Nazi regime on preservation of historical book collections, which were established in Jewish societies, schools, religious organizations and private houses in Latvia until the first Soviet occupation (1940/1941). At the beginning, libraries of Jewish associations and other institutions were expropriated by the Soviet power, which started the elimination of Jewish books and periodicals published in the independent Republic of Latvia. The massive destruction of Jewish literature collections was carried out by Nazi occupation authorities (1941-1944/45), proclaiming Jews and Judaism as their main “enemies”. However, digitized archives of Nazi organizations (mainly documents of the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce) shows that a small part of the Latvian Jewish book collections was preserved for research purposes and after the Second World War scattered in different countries. Analysis of archival documents will clarify the Nazi strategy for Latvian Jewish book collections. It will be determined which book values survived the war and what their further fate in the second half of the 1940s was.

NIEMIECKIE REPARACJE DLA POLSKI ZA II WOJNĘ ŚWIATOWĄ NA TLE GLOBALNYM

No other country in the world suffered a greater measurable and verifiable loss of human and material resources than Poland during World War II in 1939-1945. According to the first approximation, the value of human and material losses inflicted to Poland by Nazi Germany amounts to 6.495 trillion US dollars of 2018.However, Poland never received war reparations from Germany. The article is a preliminary survey of the complex issue – conducted in an interdisciplinary way combining elements of legal, economic, and political analysis, because the topic belongs to the wide and multidisciplinary field of national and international security. Refuted in the article is an internationally popular myth that communist Poland unilaterally renounced German war reparations in 1953. Then the article discusses the global background of the topic in the 20th and 21st centuries – in particular, the case of Greece whose reparations claims Germany rejects like the Polish claims, and major cases of reparations actually paid: by Germany for World War I, by Germany to Israel and Jewish organizations for the Holocaust, by Japan for World War II – at 966 billion US dollars of 2018, the largest reparations ever – and by and Iraq for the Gulf War. The article concludes with a discussion of necessary further research with advanced methodology of several sciences, and of a possible litigation before the International Court of Justice – or a diplomatic solution to the problem of war reparations.

Before the “War of Languages”: Locals, Immigrants and Philanthropists at the Hilfsverein’s Teachers’ Seminar in Jerusalem 1907–1910

Abstract Established in Jerusalem by the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, the first Teacher Training Seminar is a fascinating case study of the rapid change within the Jewish communities in late Ottoman Palestine. This essay focuses on the 1907 conflict between the Seminar’s management and its Eastern-European students concerning training and teaching in the modern Hebrew, a development which would later nourish the so-called “War of Languages” in 1913. These conflicts reflected the gap between immigrants who had fled anti-Semitic riots in Eastern Europe and witnessed Socialist revolutions, and the experiences of Jerusalem-born students familiar with the activity of philanthropic Jewish organizations within the local children’s education system. The chasm between the nationalist educational goals of the Hebrew yishuv and the Hilfsverein’s aims of modernization and professionalization led to mutual radicalization and the establishment of a separate Zionist education system by Zionist Organisations. The staunch position in favor of teaching in Hebrew expressed the Hebrew and secular national consciousness of the immigrant student, and was evidence of their professional pedagogical goals.

Birobidzhan in Khrushchev’s Thaw: the soviet and the western outlook

ABSTRACTThe present article looks into the little-researched period in the nine-decade long history of the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR), which is still present atavistically in the administrative-territorial structure of contemporary Russia. The region in the Siberian Far East, better known by the name of its main town, Birobidzhan, never turned into what it was supposed to be, namely the centre of Jewish life in the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, while being demographically and culturally insignificant, the low-statused JAR played a key and essentially detrimental role in determining the entitlements that the Jews had in the Soviet pecking order. The government consistently used the Birobidzhan-centered model of Jewish life as an instrument for justifying internationally its active assimilationist policy. In the 1950s, rumours – first about the liquidation of Jewish autonomy and then about a planned expulsion of Jews to the JAR – attracted the attention and concern of the foreign press and Jewish organizations. International pressure forced Moscow to modify its Jews-related policy, but changed little in the JAR. The 1959 census revealed 14,269 Jews in the JAR’s population. Compared with 1939, the number of Jews in the region had decreased almost by a fifth. This decline continued in the coming years.

"Struggling to Remain Relevant": Why and How Radicalization Was Impeded in the Struggle against the Gaza Pullout.

The role of cognitive mechanisms in processes of radicalization cannot be overestimated. However, focusing solely on violence-prone values and ideologies without examining how they gain and lose consequentiality in the context of relational dynamics, hampers our understanding of the shift from support for, to actual engagement in political violence. Using a case of nonradicalization-the predominantly nonviolent struggle of Jewish settlers against the Gaza Pullout (2004 to 2005)-this paper accounts for the process whereby despite the presence of violence-prone values and ideologies we observe little engagement in political violence. Findings from a mechanism-based, mixed-method design that includes content analysis, in-depth interviews, network analysis, and contention-repression data, reveal how the combined operation of the reversals of relational mechanisms mitigate the salience of cognitive mechanisms and, consequently, impede radicalization on the part of militant Jewish settler organizations. The contributions of the findings to a relational theory of radicalization are discussed in the conclusion.

Israel’s Deportation Policy of African Migrants: Internal and External Aspects

In 2016 Prime Minister of Israel Benyamin Netanyahu declared its comeback to Africa and Africa’s return to the Jewish state. The key reason for a new Israeli-African cooperation (especially between Israel and East African countries) seems to be an intent to regulate crisis with illegal immigrants from Africa in Israel. The author examines the drivers of the big inflow of African asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan trying to find ‘safe heaven’ in the Jewish State. Netanyahu prefers to treat these African asylum seekers as economic migrants. He often stresses that Israel is too small to accept everyone who is afflicted. In the Israeli society negative sentiments towards African asylum seekers are generally prevailing. However, there are some grassroots initiatives aimed at protecting Africans and their rights. Opposition parties, Zionist Union and Meretz, are not united and have not succeeded in challenging the government’s course. The main goal of this research is to evaluate the Israeli government’s approaches, including deportation of immigrants to ‘third countries’ like Rwanda and Uganda, aimed at resolving the crisis. The deportation of African asylum seekers provoked some new debates about rights of socially vulnerable groups in Israel and, moreover, its democratic character. The critique of the Netanyahu’s policies spread well beyond the borders of the State of Israel. The United Nations tried to resolve the crisis by offering a deal that would relocate Africans from Israel to different countries, but the head of the Jewish state, first agreed to sign it, but later changed his mind. Special attention is paid to the role of the American Jewish organizations in stopping the deportation of Africans from Israel. The American liberal progressive groups, for example J street, have been openly protesting against Netanyahu’s policies. The conclusion is drawn that the way out of the crisis lays in elaborating a long-term comprehensive migration strategy.

Talking about Antisemitism in France Before and After Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher

This article explores tensions in French Jewish discourses about antisemitism in the post-2000 period. Drawing on commentary from French Jewish intellectuals, national Jewish organizations, and the French Jewish press from the mid-2000s until after the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks, I note a complex relationship between change and continuity in discursive characterizations of French antisemitism. While empirical manifestations of antisemitism were notably transformed by the Toulouse attacks of 2012, much French Jewish discourse insisted on continuity from the early 2000s onward. At the same time, Jewish narrative practices shifted rather dramatically. In a political context where Israel was often depicted as part of a history of violent settler colonialism, early 2000s Jewish discourse divorced French antisemitism from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and (post)colonial racism in France. After 2012, some Jewish commentators linked Israel to French antisemitism by likening terrorism in Israel with Islamic antisemitism in France. These disjunctures between narratives and empirical violence suggest that the “structures of feeling” behind Jewish reactions to contemporary antisemitism cannot be reduced to empirical questions about safety and security. Social scientists thus need to move beyond an empirical analysis of antisemitism itself and attend to the cultural and affective work Jewish discourses about antisemitism do in any particular moment.

«Conscience of the World» or «Conspiracy of Silence»? To the Anniversaries of the Évian and Bermuda Conferences

The article represents a complex and multifaceted analysis of different aspects related to the Evian and Bermuda conferences and is based on new scientific literature and archival documents. The aspects include such issues as prerequisites for conferences in the documents of the USSR Embassy in Poland as of 1923, historical and legal analysis of the activities and outcomes of conferences from the perspective of international legal regulation of forced population migration, the evolution of F. Roosevelt’s administration policy on the issue of Jewish immigration in the 1930s-1940s, as well as the reaction of the Jewish world to the conferences. In particular, V. Pechatnov analyzes the internal and external factors of American politics, public opinion, the personal role of President Roosevelt, the imperative of waging war against the Axis countries during the conferences. The author comes to the conclusion that Roosevelt administration and the president himself were not ardent advocates of the Holocaust victims, but they were not indifferent witnesses to the tragedy, doing for Jewish immigrants more than the governments of other Western countries. In his turn, D. Ivanov carries out a legal analysis of a number of international agreements on forced migration, adopted by states within the framework of the League of Nations, as well as the reasons for their low effectiveness. The author pays special attention to political events in Europe after Hitler coming to power. The author concludes that the unpreparedness of European states and the United States to accept ethnic Jews from German-occupied countries on their territory became one of the reasons for their mass death. S. Sklyarov proves the thesis that the Evian and Bermuda conferences demonstrated the consistency of the policies of the 32 member countries, which ultimately resulted in European Jews being the victims of Holocaust. As an example of such consistency and its earlier manifestation, which did not take into account the hopelessness of the situation of Jewish refugees, are the events of 1923 in Poland. Researcher A. Krylov presents an alternative point of view on the participation of Jewish organizations in conferences. The author refutes the widespread opinion that the leaders of Jewish organizations were not allowed to participate in the above-mentioned conferences. In fact, the Zionist movement, which took the leading positions in the Jewish communities of the world, ignored these conferences, considering them harmful because of England’s persistent refusal to abolish the White Paper of 1936, which restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. The leaders of the Zionist movement provided assistance only to those refugees who agreed to settle in Palestine.

„Lone soldiers" – żołnierze bez rodzin

W Siłach Obronnych Izraela (Cewa Hagana le-Jisra’el) służbę pełni ponad6000 żołnierzy – ochotników spoza tego kraju. Większość z nich pochodzi ze Stanów Zjednoczonych, Francji, Rosji oraz Argentyny. W ich rekrutacji pośredniczą takie organizacje żydowskie jak: Mahal-IDF-Volunteers, Sar-El, czy Nefesh B’Nefesh. Biura tych stowarzyszeń znajdują się przede wszystkim w Europie i Stanach Zjednoczonych. Młodzi mężczyźni i kobiety, z których większość w izraelskiej armii otrzymuje status lone soldiers, pełnią służbę w różnych rodzajach sił zbrojnych i jednostkach wojskowych, także w tych, które biorą udział w bezpośrednich działaniach bojowych.Kim byli pierwsi ochotnicy, a kim są obecnie młodzi ludzie, którzy dobrowolnie zdecydowali się na wyjazd z kraju, opuszczenie własnych rodzin i przyjaciół? Jakie towarzyszą im problemy, z czego one wynikają i w jaki sposób próbuje się pomóc samotnym żołnierzom? Artykuł jest próbą odpowiedzi na te pytania i stanowi ogólny zarys problemu.

The Return of Cultural Genocide?

Today, cultural genocide and the protection of cultural groups return to occupy criminal international law. Most writers see it as a new problem in need of normative solution. In this article we suggest that the problem is as old as the concept of genocide itself, and suggest to explore it through the lens of law and history. We argue that the original conceptualization of the crime of genocide-as presented by Raphael Lemkin-gave cultural genocide center stage. The novelty of the Nazi crime lay in the methodical attempt to destroy a group-well beyond typical war crimes and acts of repression-and what makes up a group's identity is its culture. Hence, for Lemkin, the essence of genocide was cultural. Ironically, the final text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide does not prohibit cultural genocide as such. What led to this almost total inversion of the original meaning of genocide, from an encompassing concept of genocide to one limited to its physical and biological aspects? Explaining the riddle of cultural genocide is the aim of this article. It will examine the various junctures of law, politics and history in which the concept was shaped: the original conceptualization by Lemkin; litigation in national and international criminal courts; and the drafting process of the Genocide Convention. Against the dominance of criminal law, we return to the forgotten successful struggle for cultural restitution (books, archives and works of art) fought by Jewish organizations after the Holocaust as a countermeasure to cultural genocide. We show that only by bringing together these various struggles can we recover a robust understanding of cultural genocide, once repressed by international law, and now returns to haunt us by the demands of groups for recognition and protection.

The Response of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to the Crisis of Soviet Jewish Émigré Dropouts (Noshrim) in the 1970s

The JDC is an American Jewish organization that assists overseas Jewish communities in distress. It is responsible to “American Jewry” and those organizations that fund it. Bauer (1974, 19) argued that the JDC has been guided by its founding “pledge of impartiality – it steers clear of political involvements” and takes pride in being “probably the only really non-partisan organization in Jewish life.” This paper examines the role of the JDC in caring for Soviet émigrés who left on visas for Israel but chose to resettle elsewhere. They were known as “dropouts” (Noshrim in Hebrew). It also deals with the JDC policy toward recently settled Russian Jews who left Israel to resettle elsewhere. In its work with Soviet Jewish emigres did the JDC serve the interests of the Israeli government, its donors and or the emigres? Did the JDC abide by its pledge of impartiality? Did the JDC try to force them to resettle in Israel against their wishes? The paper focuses on the spring of 1976 when the number of dropouts outnumbered those resettling in Israel. This led to a joint committee of Israelis and American Jews to coordinate a response. The ‘freedom of choice’ debate ensued; should Soviet Jews resettle in Israel or have the freedom to choose where to resettle? The findings here are based on archival records in the JDC, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the CJF (Jewish federations) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The author also conducted interviews and reviewed secondary sources. The paper should contribute to a better understanding of the JDC and its past ties to Israel and the American Jewish community.

“Sometimes a Bee Can Move an Ox”: Biblical Epics and One Man's Quest to Promote Jewish Values in Blacklist-Era Hollywood

In the 1950s, the top American Jewish organizations chose a single man, John Stone, to represent their collective interests in Hollywood. Over the course of the decade, Stone's Motion Picture Project sought to prevent antisemitism on film and to inspire the creation of positive Jewish characters. Negotiating the cultural politics of the era, however, resulted in an increasing tendency to favor depictions of biblical Jews over contemporary American ones. In a strange twist, Stone endorsed no film with as much zeal asBen-Hur, a New Testament celebration of Jesus. By following Stone's tortuous attempts to navigate Cold War controversies, and by casting new light on the phenomenal success of biblical epics in the 1950s, this essay suggests that at the heart of postwar popular culture was a shift toward a particular discourse of liberal humanism.

SPOTTING AND LIQUIDATION OF UKRAINIAN, POLISH AND JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS IN DROHOBYCH BY SOVIET REPRESSIVE UNITS (1940)

In the articles an excerpt from an intelligence-operative agency case of the struggle of Soviet repressive-punitive administration against Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish both illegal and legal organisations has been analysed. The published document provides the chance to disclose the features of establishment of the Soviet administration in Drohobych and to trace the extent of the local repressive policy towards the political, public, cultural, and religious organisations. The document is kept in the Security service of Ukraine’s branch state archive, more particularly, in Fund 71 (The Acts of transfer of archival documentary materials of UCSS (Ukrainian Committee of State Security) in Lviv region into archive (1939 – 1991).

The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee

ABSTRACTThe Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC), established in the early phase of the Soviet-Nazi war as a propaganda unit, gradually developed links with foreign Jewish organizations and began to act as a body taking responsibility for Soviet Jewish citizens’ interests. The turning point in the JAFC's destiny was the 1943 trip of its top representatives, Solomon Mikhoels and Itsik Fefer, to the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Britain. The success of their tour had encouraged the committee to extend the areas of its activity and, at the same time, had drawn a more attantive gaze of the Soviet secret police. In 1948, the decision came to close the JAFC and, concurrently or later, virtually the entire infrastructure of Jewish cultural life in the Soviet Union. In 1952, a group of Jewish intellectuals faced a secret trial, whose minutes are analyzed in the special section of East European Jewish Affairs. This article provides an introduction to the analysis presented in this special section.

Jews, Zionism and the Left in Brazil: Echoes of a Relationship

Abstract During considerable part of the twentieth century, the contacts between left-wing groups and the Jews in Brazil were relatively positive and amicable. In certain way, it could be found a kind of a symbiosis between sectors of the Jewish community and some groups of the Brazilian left. At present times, in contrast, any description of the interaction between Jewish organizations (especially Zionist ones) and Brazilian left-wing groups inevitably mentions political tensions and mutual accusations. In the last years suspicion, conflict, and a lack of dialogue have characterized the relations between a segments of the Brazilian Jewish population and some left-wing groups. This article intends to discuss and analyze the changes and processes through which the Brazilian Jews and some Left-wing Brazilian groups have passed.

Regulating and resisting queer creativity: Community-engaged arts practice in the neoliberal city

This article draws from and advances urban studies literature on ‘creative city’ policies by exploring the contradictory role of queer arts practice in contemporary placemarketing strategies. Here I reflect on the fraught politics surrounding Radiodress’s each hand as they are called project, a deeply personal exploration of radical Jewish history programmed within Luminato, a Toronto-based international festival of creativity. Specifically, I explore how Luminato and the Koffler Centre, a Jewish organisation promoting contemporary art, regulated Radiodress’s work in order to stage marketable notions of ethnic and queer diversity. I also examine how and why the Koffler Centre eventually blacklisted Radiodress and her project. However, I also consider the ways Radiodress and Toronto artists creatively and collectively responded to these tensions. I maintain that bringing queer arts practice into discussions about contemporary creative city policies uncovers sites of queer arts activism that scale up to shape broader policies and debates. Such disidentificatory interventions, acts of co-opting and re-working discourses which exclude minoritarian subjects, challenge violent processes of colonisation and commodification on multiple fronts, as well as fostering more collective and relational ways of being.

Working towards gender equality in small and medium-sized third sector organisations: an incremental approach

This paper describes and discusses a gender equality project conducted with Jewish third sector organisations (TSOs). An adapted version of ‘Project Juno’ was used to support six small or mediumsized TSOs in working towards gender equality. Key learning points for the wider TSO sector are drawn out.

“The Edge of the Abyss”: The Origins of the Israel Lobby, 1949–1954

The main components of the Israel lobby in the United States were organized in the spring of 1954, six years after the State of Israel declared independence, in response to a crisis in U.S.–Israel diplomacy that erupted in October 1953. Israeli soldiers had massacred more than sixty Palestinian villagers in Qibya, on the West Bank, eliciting widespread condemnation; American Jews, in reply, mobilized to defend Israel in new ways. The American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (later renamed AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, established at this time, displayed two outstanding features. They were Jewish united front organizations that brought together Zionist with “non-Zionist” groups. They also emerged from transnational contacts with Israeli leaders and realities. A staunch near-consensus in defense of Israel in the most trying circumstances established a lasting framework in American Jewish life.