A refuge or the Jewish homeland?
One of the reasons that many American Jews do not make effective advocates for Israel, argues Matthew Ackerman, is that they are still stuck in a pre-World War II concept that Israel must be presented as a refuge for persecuted Jews, and not as the Jewish homeland. Presenting Israel as the Jewish homeland, these Jews fear, would undermine their standing in the United States and raise charges of dual loyalty. This problem was evident in the career of Louis Brandeis, the first prominent American Jewish advocate for Zionism. Already a famous lawyer when he assumed leadership of the Zionist movement in the United States in 1914 (a reputation that would bring him to the Supreme Court in 1916), he gave the movement a tremendous boost in American renown and credibility.Ackerman argues that it's time for American Jews to get over it, a position with which I heartily agree.
But Brandeis brought with him an insistence that Zionism had nothing to say for American Jews. The establishment of a Jewish state would for him be a refuge for Jews lacking the means or ability to get to a place like the United States where their rights would be assured. So it was that principally along these
lines – Zionism as a refuge for the persecuted and impoverished Jews of Europe and elsewhere and little else besides – that the Zionist case was made by
American Jews before World War II.
The Holocaust only strengthened this line of argument, making the rhetoric of security and refuge irresistible. The same kind of thinking behind Brandeis’ Zionism remained evident in the important exchange of letters between the American Jewish Committee leader Jacob Blaustein and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1950. In them, Blaustein underlined the view that Israel was a “home” for “hundreds of thousands” of Jews from “Europe, Africa, and the Middle East,” but that “home” for American Jewry was the United States, and it was there that they found “freedom” and “security,” not a continuation of “exile.”
This thinking, whether from Brandeis, Blaustein, or the many other Jews they and other American Jewish leaders have represented, seems determined by the fear that defining Israel as the Jewish homeland puts into question their standing in their country of citizenship. Effective American Jewish Israel advocacy has largely been built in the last 50 years on the avoidance of this fear. It was and is far easier to invoke the Holocaust, to claim no more than “Israel is our insurance policy,” as the protagonist in the 2010 movie “Barney’s Version” learns.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: David Ben Gurion, Louis Brandeis, Zionism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:20 PM
2 Comments:
With the jihadi in the White House, they may have to get over it a lot sooner than they planned!!
Everyone should head out to Newport, Rhode Island and visit the Touro Synagogue and take the tour and read everything they have. http://www.tourosynagogue.org
If the American Jewish community will embrace the constitution and American history, rather than Leftist ideology, the fear of "what will the neighbors say" will lessen. Carl, I just think the Leftism is the 99% problem, not these other things (even Israel). Israel is a gem and G-d Bless America. May neither be demolished by fearfulness. And remember that the Americans of the 1700s talked about Israel constantly and were aiming to be a replica of sorts. Read the old writings.
"...It would be inconsistent with the frankness of
my character not to avow that I am pleased with your
favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent
wishes for my felicity. May the children of the Stock
of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit
and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while
every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and
figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
May the father of all mercies scatter light and not
darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several
vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way
everlastingly happy.
G. Washington"
http://www.tourosynagogue.org/pdfs/WashingtonLetter.pdf
George Washington wanted friendships...
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