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 This study
aims to shed some light on the crucial questions that confront the American
Jewish community, particularly its ongoing and evolving relationship
with
the state of Israel. These include the Jewish community’s
perceptions of its
own
identity, whether as a follower or a pace- setter, critic or
obedient bank-roller,
and its role in the American society and political system. It will
examine the
concept of power as it relates to a community that has made
impressive achievements
in politics, economics, finance, the arts, academia, the professions
and
philanthropy. At the same time, it will probe the concept of
powerlessness, as
a legacy of victimization that seems to permeate sectors of the
community, despite
the amazing success.
We will trace
the evolution of the community’s relationship with Israel—from
anti-
Zionist and a- Zionist positions during the first half of the 20th
century, to uncritical
support in 1948, when the state was established and through the
1970s, to
the dissension of the 1980s and 1990s over the invasion of Lebanon,
the suppression
of the Intifada, the question of religious legitimacy, and the Oslo
process.
These latter developments seemed to have lifted the strictly
-observed, yet
informal embargo on any public criticism of whatever Israel does.
The study will
also examine the dynamics of a relationship that seems to move
between
total devotion and mild disenchantment to open discord. At certain
junctures,
Israel itself would appear as the foremost, if not the sole, agenda
for the
meticulously organized Jewish community, while at other times the
community’s
principal concerns would converge on a wholly domestic American
agenda.
Not only would these concerns relate to the social and economic
affairs of
the community itself, but would also go to the heart of the larger
American social
and economic agenda.
The issue of
“return” and “ingathering” has not played a prominent role in such
debates,
given that the American Jewish community had never suffered from
persecution
and remained largely unaffected by what became known during the
latter
part of the 19th Century as the Jewish Problem. American Jews have
been assimilating
relatively rapidly into the mainstream of American society and
politics,
and have been largely less susceptible to Zionist reminders about
the need
for “diaspora” Jews to make aliya i.e. to ascend by moving to
Palestine.
THE IDENTITY QUESTION:
The terms”
diaspora” and the “Jewish people” are rather complex in that there
is little
consensus on their true meaning and real content. Diaspora denotes
dispersion
and scattering, and thus, anti-Zionist and a-Zionist Jews do not
relate to
such characterization in as much as they consider people,
irrespective of their
religion,
as citizens of the countries in which they reside.
The concept of
the “Jewish People” is equally unresolved in that it is derived
from
a religious affiliation. The identity of a Jewish person does not
rest on his/her
national identity, but on simply being Jewish, regardless of whether
the person
is observant or not. But within the definition of the “ Jewish
People,” there
are sub-categories, such as Sephardis and Ashkenazis, Spiritual
Zionists, who
regard Judaism as a religion of universal values, and political
Zionists, who perceive
Judaism as a nationality and view the Jewish state as a necessity.
The latter
category was not only anchored in nationalism, but became largely
secular in
nature and European in culture, with Judaism bestowing legitimacy on
its policies
and practices.
Most American
Jews are descendants of Europeans who, despite their Yiddish
culture,
were able to forge a new identity and create a unique American
Jewish community,
molded by their own experiences in America. American Jewry was
the
product of three main waves of immigration: Portuguese Maranos in
the colonial
era, German Jews in the mid-19th century and Russian Jews in the
20th. A
common denominator of these waves was an antipathy to the Jewish
community
in which they lived in Europe and to the society at large, both of
which
treated them with disdain. Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg described that
phenomenon
of double discrimination succinctly, thus:
The immigrant
Jews….felt betrayed by the societies, the government,
the rabbis, and the rich Jewish leaders who had cast them out, or
at
the very least, had failed to find room for them…They would not
allow
the very people who had betrayed them in Europe to exercise
authority
in America.
While their
double grievances in Europe helped shape an assertive demeanor for
the
American Jewish community, vis a vis the powerful and oppressor,
certain characteristics
of the new society also helped build independent attitudes. The
separation
of church and state in American constitutional politics endowed the
American
Jewish community with a sense of liberation that continued to drive
a certain
wedge between a recreated Jewish community and its leaders. J.J.
Goldberg
illustrated the point this way:
To be sure,
these immigrants recreated a Jewish community with
a
difference. This was a new world, where religion was
disestablished.
Churches had no legal hold over believer; likewise, the Jewish
community had
no hold over Jews. It was de-fanged. Over time, Jews developed a
new mythology of an organized American Jewish community led by
well- meaning
bumblers.
Perhaps, this
sense of pluralism, together with what some Jewish writers
described
as “inept leadership,” contributed initially to the community’s
rejection
of political Zionism and its project of establishing a national home
for the
Jews. When Theodore Herzl began to preach his message that a state
for the Jews
represented the best solution to the “Jewish problem” and the
logical safeguard
against the evils of anti-Semitism, the American Jewish community
could
not relate to that message. As segments of European Jewry embraced
Herzl’s
message, considering Zionism as a safety valve for the so-called
diaspora Jews,
American Jews dismissed the new ideology as divisive and
unnecessary. Having
experienced few symptoms of the “Jewish problem” and feeling
confident
in their new home, they perceived Zionism as a force capable of
isolating
Jews from the societies in which they lived, and thus becoming a
self-inflicted
liability instead of a safety valve.
As an example
of this aversion to Zionism, 30 prominent American Jewish
persons
issued a declaration in 1918 expressing opposition to the project of
establishing
a Jewish state in Palestine. The declaration also objected to
“isolating Jews
from their own societies and distinguishing them as national
entities within
countries
in which they live.” The signatories expressed their confidence that
they
“represent the views of the majority in the American Jewish
community, whether
they were born here or in other countries, but they lived here for a
long time
and assimilated socially and politically to the American society.”
Moreover, their
declaration asserted that Zionists in America constitute a small
percentage of
American Jews—about 150,000 out of 3.5 million.
Similarly, at
the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which was held in
Pittsburgh
in 1885, representatives of Reform Judaism considered Jews as
constituting
a religious group rather than a nationality. It is also worth noting
that
the famous Basle Conference of 1897 was scheduled to be held in
Munich had
it not been for fierce opposition from the Jewish community in
Germany and the
German Rabbinical Executive there. At the Eighth Central Conference
of American
Rabbis held in Montreal in 1987, Rabbi Isaac Wise said that the
Basle Scheme
was nothing but a pipe dream. As late as 1931, Rabbi Kaufman Kohler
wrote
the following on this subject:
The
place of the Jewish people is the world and among the nations
their mission and sphere are universal and cant be limited to a
small
plot that they consider theirs. The aim and goal is the ideal home
of
humanity, that is not built by human hands.
But while the American Jewish community was not entirely
anti-Zionist during
the
latter part of the 19th century, the general attitude towards
Zionism was one
of
apathy. Theodore Herzl challenged that community in June 1901 not to
allow life
in the new world make them oblivious to his colonial project, which
he projected
as a humanitarian task to save the less fortunate Jews:
A crucial
moment has arrived in the history of the Jews. Shall they
miss this unprecedented opportunity of laying the ghost of the
Jewish
question, of ending the tragedy of the wandering Jew? Will the Jews
of America, in particular, forget in their own happiness in the
glorious land of freedom, how heavy is the bondage of their
brethren?
Louis Lipsky,
author of A Gallery of Zionist Profiles described the lack of
receptivity
to Zionism on the part of the American Jewish community by saying
that the ideology arrived in the parlors of the respectable as:
…a
disturber of their peace of mind…an offense to their Americanism
….an
obstacle to Jewish adjustment in a democratic environment; it
revived memories they wished to forget. The Orthodox at the time
were steeped in their traditions and rejected innovations; they
believed in the
Messiah
and the Redemption of Zion, but God had to utter the word.
The Jewish
labor movement accepted the materialistic conception of
history
that came from the mind of Karl Marx; they had already written off
Jewish nationality as one of the sacrifices the Jews would have to
make
for the world-revolution; and they regarded Zionists as benighted
reactionaries.
The American
Jewish community was far too preoccupied with making a place
for
itself in the new world, leaving Zionism to the European Jews. When
the Federation
of American Zionists met in Rochester, New York in 1914, less than
15,000
paying members were represented, and the annual budget totaled a
mere $12,150.
Samuel Halperin described the disinterest of the American Jewish
community
this way:
America was too bewildering, and the daily struggle for economic
survival too arduous,
to permit them the luxury of much Zionist activity. The glamour of
Palestine
was too distant; the squalor of the East Side was too close….Zionism
was
still an Old World movement, scorned and vilified by those affluent
Jews who
considered themselves legitimate Americans. The occasional
Americanized rabbi
or professional who embraced Zionism was merely a “hopeless
romantic.”
Jewish
aversion and/or apathy towards Zionism can also be explained by the
antipathy
of socialists to nationalist ideologies, including
settler-colonialist
movements.
Immigrants of the late 19th century and early 20th have been
described,
by mainstream and leftist American Jewish writers, as a downtrodden
class
escaping oppression and poverty. Workers and broad segments of the
intelligentsia
who embraced Marxian ideology made up a significant sector of
socialist
workers parties in the United States. Lenni Brenner, an anti-Zionist
American
Jew commented on the socialist origins of the Jewish immigrant
community
thus:
Revolution
became the major cause within the immigrant world. Since The 1880s
persecution and poverty had compelled Jewish revolutionaries
to join the
non-political immigrants in the U.S, but the initial groups were
quite
isolated.
Thus, the
disenchantment of American Jewry with Zionism was related to
numerous
factors ranging from the ideological, to the pragmatic, to the
theological
and philosophical. An appreciable segment of anti-Zionists came
from
the ranks of exploited labor and disaffected intelligentsia, but a
good number
of religious leaders registered their opposition on theological
grounds. One
of the most penetrating studies of early anti-Zionism was edited by
Gary Smith
in 1974. It shows that objection to political Zionism was rampant in
the circles
of Reform Judaism as well as Orthodox Judaism. Essays on the
subject, reproduced
in the volume, illustrate the views of well- known philosophers and
theologians
such as Hans Kohn, Morris Cohen, Rabbi Morris Lazarus, I.F. Stone,
among
others. (13)
Among the
salient ideas expressing the negative impact of Zionism articulated
by
these philosophers are the following:
The debasement
of the spiritual Zionist idea and deviation from Jewish ethics, by
virtual
deification of individuals.
The negative
impact of the modern secular state on Judaism and Jewish culture.
The total
contradiction between American liberalism based on the notions of
individual
rights, the melting pot, and the separation of church and state, on
the one
hand, and the Zionist idea based on collective rights and racial
exclusiveness.
A Jewish state in Palestine, unlike the United States, will not
approve
mixed marriages, and immigration of non-Jews, since that would
destroy
its raison d’etre.
The state that
will be built on Herzl’s prophecies will not be Jewish, but Israeli
focusing
on a nationality and removed from the consciousness of the Jewish
people.
Meanwhile the Jewish people’s concept will not entail a nation in
the true sense
of the concept of nation. For Orthodox Judaism, the concept of
national continuity
means the continuation of the Jewish particularity facing extinction
in the
diaspora and not the continuation of the Jewish nation. In much of
religious tradition
and practices, identity is anchored not in a nation but in a
community. As such,
Jewish immigration to Palestine is not driven by a sense of
belonging to a nation,
but by fear of European anti- Semitism.
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