FOR MORE AND MORE JEWISH AMERICANS, ZIONISM LOOKS LIKE A DANGEROUS WRONG TURN

Article Details FOR MORE AND MORE JEWISH AMERICANS, ZIONISM LOOKS LIKE A DANGEROUS WRONG TURN Allan C. Brownfeld Issues Spring - Summer 2024 In recent months increasing attention has been focused upon developments in the Middle East. The October 7 terrorist assault on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s response, which has already cost the lives of more than 34,000 Palestinians, including thousands of women and children, has focused attention upon the way in which Zionism has come to dominate American Jewish life. More and more Jewish Americans are coming to the conclusion that Zionism was a dangerous wrong turn for American Judaism, as the American Council for Judaism has argued from the beginning. In the Council’s view, Judaism is a religion of universal values, not a nationality. American Jews are American by nationality and Jews by religion, just as other Americans are Protestant, Catholic or Muslim. Zionism, on the other hand, argues that, somehow, Israel is the “homeland” of all Jews, and Jews living elsewhere are in “exile.” Zionism has come to dominate American Jewish life, with Israeli flags on synagogue pulpits and Jewish schools promoting the idea that emigration to Israel is the highest ideal for Jewish young people. Much of American Judaism seems to place the state of Israel in the position of a virtual object of worship, a form of pagan idolatry much like the worship of the golden calf in the Bible. This is not Judaism, which is a religion of universal values dedicated to the long Jewish moral and ethical tradition which declares that men and women of every racial and ethnic background are created in the image of God. Jewish Americans Are Not In “Exile” Jewish Americans are not, as Zionism proclaims, in “exile,” but are very much at home, and always have been. In 1841, in the dedication of America’s first Reform synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi Gustav Poznanski told the congregation, “This country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.” Zionism, many forget, was a minority view in Jewish life until the rise of Nazism in Europe. Even then, many Jewish voices warned against substituting nationalism for the humane and universal Jewish prophetic tradition. In 1938, alluding to Nazism, Albert Einstein warned an audience of Zionist activists against the temptation to create a state imbued with “a narrow nationalism within our own ranks against which we have already had to fight strongly even without a Jewish state.” The prominent Jewish philosopher Martin Buber spoke out in 1942 against “the aim of the minority to ‘conquer’ territory by means of international maneuvers.” From Jerusalem, where he was teaching at the Hebrew University, Buber, speaking at the time hostilities broke out after Israel unilaterally declared independence in May 1948, cried with despair, “This sort of ‘Zionism’ blasphemes the name of Zion; it is nothing more than one of the crude forms of nationalism.” A Rupture in American Jewish Life In an article titled “The Great Rupture in American Jewish Life” (New York Times, March 22, 2024), Peter Beinart, an editor of Jewish Currents, notes that, “For the last decade or so, an ideological tremor has been unsettling American Jewish life. Since Oct. 7, it has become an earthquake. It concerns the relationship between liberalism and Zionism, two creeds that for more than half a century have defined American Jewish identity. In the years to come, American Jews will face growing pressure to choose between them.” Beinart points out that, “The American Jews who are making a different choice —- jettisoning Zionism because they can’t reconcile it with the liberal principle of equality under the law…their numbers are larger than many recognize, especially among millennials and Generation Z…The emerging rupture between American liberalism and American Zionism constitutes the greatest transformation in American Jewish life for decades to come.” American Jews, wrote Albert Vorspan, a leader of Reform Judaism in 1988, “have made of Israel an icon—-a surrogate faith, surrogate synagogue, surrogate God.” In the years to come, Peter Beinart believes, “For an American Jewish establishment that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, these anti-Zionist Jews are inconvenient. There’s nothing antisemitic about envisioning a future in which Palestinians and Jews coexist on the basis of legal equality rather than Jewish supremacy…For many decades, American Jews have built our political identity on contradictions. Pursue equal citizenship here; defend group supremacy there. Now, here and there are converging. In the years to come we will have to choose.” No Liberal Rights for Palestinians Many are in the process of choosing now. Noah Feldman, the Harvard Law School professor and First Amendment scholar, and author of the book “To Be a Jew Today,” declares: “Today, many progressive American Jews find it difficult to see Israel as a genuine liberal democracy, mostly because some 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli authority with no realistic prospect of liberal rights.” Shaul Magid, a professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, says, “In my view, the Zionist narrative, even in its more liberal forms, cultivates an exclusivity and proprietary ethos that too easily slides into ethnonational chauvinism.” Oren Kroc-Zeldin, director of Jewish Studies at the University of San Francisco, says that “Jewish liberation in Israel was predicated on the oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” He says he rejects “a monolithic Pro-Israel identity.” Within Reform Judaism, there have been calls for a move away from Zionism. A letter signed by more than 1200 alumni and current members of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) addressed to the organization on Dec. 16,2023 declares, “We grieve for the 1,200 killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7th attack and the more than 18,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military—-almost half of whom have been children —-since then. Israel has cut off water, electricity, fuel and supplies to Gaza. We are deeply concerned that tax dollars have been so easily provided to support Israel’s military assault on Gaza, while we struggle for the basic needs of our communities.” The letter declares that “The URJ teaches practicing Pikuach Nefeshz, ‘saving a life,’ and Tikkun Olam, ‘repairing the world.’ An immediate cease-fire is in line with these Jewish values.” “Atrocities committed In Our Name” At the same time, a letter was released from descendants of progressive rabbis and leaders to express “our horror at URJ’s failure to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. We are alarmed that the leadership of our community has not demanded an end to Israel’s devastating violence against Palestinians in addition to the safe and immediate return of the hostages…A decades-long campaign to dehumanize Palestinians has hardened the American Jewish community’s hearts. Atrocities are being committed in our name. We do not consider the killing of thousands of innocent civilians to be a justifiable consequence of ensuring our community’s protection.” The letter concludes: “The URJ continues to actively alienate alumni with its uncompromising Zionist rhetoric…We will reconsider our and the next generation’s membership and support for the URJ unless there is a public and dramatic shift in the way the movement addresses Israel.” Among the original signers of the letter are Zippy Janas, a descendant of Rabbi Julius Rappaport, Chana Powell, daughter of current URJ rabbi Talia Yudkin Toffany, and Zachariah Sippy, son of Rabbi David Wirtschaffer. Reform Jews for Justice At the same time, an organization called Reform Jews for Justice has been established (https//reformjewsforjustice.com). It declares that “As Reform Jews we stand together for Justice in solidarity with Palestine. We unite in our values to call for a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. …We have come together to call on our movement to engage in Solidarity with Palestine. We envision a Reform Jewish movement that…rejects the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism…The URJ leaders have unabashedly demonstrated shameful tactics of ethno-nationalism and tribal political priorities over simple ethics and the illegitimate and dangerous conflation of Zionism and Judaism. We have been alienated from the movement that raised us to ask, ‘If I am only for myself, what am I?’—-through binary language suggesting that our affiliation is conditional on Zionism. We will not stand by.” In recent years, there has been a growing effort to redefine “antisemitism” to include not simply bigotry toward Jews and Judaism, but also criticism of Israel and Zionism. In May 2022, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) declared that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” Ignoring the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, he has been strenuously promoting this false and ahistoric notion ever since. Some Israelis admit that falsely equating anti- Zionism with antisemitism is a tactic to silence criticism of Israel. Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli Minister of Education, and winner of the Israel Prize, described how this works: “It’s a trick. We always use it. When from Europe, somebody criticizes Israel, we bring up the Holocaust. When in the United States, people are critical of Israel, then they are antisemitic.” The tactic of equating criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism has come under widespread criticism. Writing in Slate (April 29, 2024), Emily Tamkin headlined her article, “The ADL has abandoned some of the people it exists to protect: For those with the wrong opinions, the group is now a threat to Jewish Safety.” Muddying The Waters About Antisemitism Tamkin writes: “Over the past six months, Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the ADL, has stressed repeatedly that he is concerned about rising antisemitism. Unfortunately, he has also made clear that he cares about antisemitism only as he defines it and as it affects people who agree with him on the definition…The ADL… is insisting on conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism and it has made its conflation central to the ADL’s work. This has not only muddied the waters of its own antisemitism research, it has also undermined the safety, security, and pluralism of American Jews.” One example is the fact that ADL evidently mapped protests for a cease-fire led by the Jewish groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow as “antisemitic incidents” on its calculation of how much antisemitism has risen. This makes it more difficult to assess the year-over-year change in antisemitic incidents. Tamkin notes that, “Of course, an increase will seem more dramatic if you are now counting incidents, you weren’t before—-but it also arguably undermines the rest of the ADL’s reporting of antisemitism.” When it comes to Jonathan Greenblatt, a story in Jewish Currents from 2021 revealed that former ADL employees felt that Greenblatt was choosing defense of Israel over protecting civil liberties, one of the group’s- stated missions. In March 2023, Jewish Currents published a report on internal dissent at ADL over Greenblatt publishing a report comparing pro-Palestinian groups to the extreme right. Greenblatt has compared pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University to the explicitly neo-Nazi march in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He likened the group Jewish Voice for Peace to the terrorist group Hezbollah and called it an “on campus proxy for Iran.” Younger Jews Disconnected from Israel In Emily Tamkin’s view, “I wonder how likening a Jewish student group to a terrorist organization helps stop the defamation of the Jewish people, or scores justice and fair treatment to all…Younger American Jews are increasingly critical of and feel disconnected from Israel. The Pew 2020 study on American Jews found 51% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 were not emotionally connected at all to Israel…Young American Jews were “less likely to view antisemitism as ‘a very serious problem.’…Greenblatt is failing to stand up for the rights of all American Jews. He is using his position to make clear that some Jews are more worthy of protection and political representation than others. He’ll have powerful allies, including non-Jews who have made common cause with open antisemites.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu falsely described student protestors on behalf of Palestinian rights as “antisemitic mobs” and likened the demonstrations to “what happened in German universities in the 1930s.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (IND-VT), who is Jewish and lost members of his family in the Holocaust, pushed back against Netanyahu’s characterization of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations. He declared to Netanyahu: “It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless—-almost half the population.” Sanders continued: “Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable things to many millions of people. But please do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the illegal and immoral policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in Israeli courts.” Protesting Against Slaughter Is Not Antisemitism Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and now professor of public philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, writing in The Guardian (April 3, 2024) makes the point that, “Protesting against this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus —-taking a stand against a perceived wrong, thereby provoking discussion and debate.” In the view of Robert Reich, who is Jewish, “Education is all about provocation. Without being provoked—-stirred, unsettled, goaded—-even young minds can remain stuck in old tracks…The Israel-Hamas war is horrifying. The atrocities committed by both sides illustrate the capacities of human beings for inhumanity, show the vile consequences of hate. Or it presents an opportunity for students to re- examine their preconceptions and learn from one another…Peaceful demonstrations should be encouraged, not shut down…To tar all offensive speech ‘hate speech’ and ban it removes a central pillar of education…” Jewish critics of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians are receiving increasing attention. The Forward (May 6, 2024) carried a feature article with the headline, “This 100-year-old Jewish activist is speaking up again—-this time about Gaza.” It reports that, “Jules Rabin stood at the busiest intersection of Montpelier, Vermont in early April with snow still on the sidewalks, protesting the war in Gaza. Accompanied by about 75 friends and family members —-holding a sign that asked, ‘How could the Nazi genocide of Jews 1933-45 be followed by the Israeli genocide of Palestinians today?’ He was celebrating his 100th birthday.” “A Piecemeal Holocaust” Jules Rabin, a World War 11 veteran, graduate of Harvard, former Goddard College professor and a pioneer in Vermont’s bread-making renaissance who, with his wife, ran a bakery for more than 40 years, appeared on a podcast on the nonprofit Vermont Digger. He referred to the tragedy unfolding in Gaza as a “piecemeal Holocaust.” He told podcast host David Goodman that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza “resembles what the Germans did to Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and everywhere else in Europe.” In Rabin’s view, the Jewish claim for restitution after World War 11 should have resulted in the Germans awarding Prussia or Bavaria to the Jewish people. Concerning the latest news from Gaza and the West Bank, Rabin says, “One can’t look the other way when something dreadful is going on.” In May, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would enshrine a contentious definition of antisemitism into U.S. law. The Antisemitic Awareness Act (AAA) passed the House by a wide margin. It mandates government civil rights offices to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. This definition has drawn widespread criticism because most of its examples of antisemitism involve criticism of the state of Israel, such as calling it a “racist endeavor.” If this bill is passed by the Senate, which will consider it at a later date, it would mean that this definition would apply when officials adjudicate Title V1 complaints alleging campus antisemitism. Opponents say it chills legitimate criticism of Israel. The bill passed by a vote of 320-91. Opponents of the IHRA definition include Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the House’s longest serving Jewish member. He declared that “Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination. By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into Title V1’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly.” The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (May 2, 2024) reported that, “Americans for Peace Now, a dovish pro-Israel group worried that the bill, should it become law, would be used as ‘a cudgel against the millions of Americans, including many Jewish Americans, who object to the Netanyahu government’s decisions and actions.” Jewish Critics of AAA Legislation Even some members of the Jewish establishment are critical of the AAA legislation. Alan Solow, who serves on the board of the Nexus leadership Project and is a former Chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, wrote this in The Forward (May 3, 2024): “Distinctions…are vital for developing strategies to fight this prejudice. If those with whom we disagree about Israel—-sometimes vehemently—-are labeled antisemitic without regard to nuance or context —-they will not join us in coalition against anti- Jewish bigotry…A viable strategy against this scourge…must recognize this….It cannot ignore…the diversity that exists in this country, a diversity reflected in an intense debate about Israel within the Jewish community, on college campuses as beyond…If the Senate passes the AAA, it will alienate our political allies, including stalwart supporters of Jewish causes and Israel, and narrow the coalition we need to confront the spread of antisemitism.” An editorial, “Not in Our Name” appeared in the Jewish journal Tablet (May 3,2024). It declared, “There is no exception for hate speech in the Constitution —-it is not, according to the Constitution of the United States of America, illegal to say that the State of Israel ‘has no right to exist’…No governmental authority has the standing to penalize you for (making such a statement) …That includes Congress. The fact that a word or idea is annoying or upsetting to you —-or us! —-does not make it illegal.” Tablet declares that “This includes the phrase ‘From the River to the sea,’ which the House of Representatives voted to condemn last month. This is wrong. No citizen of America, Jewish or not, should support the condemnation of speech by those whose conditional authority is entrusted to them by the people. You are American citizens. However noxious your beliefs, as long as they stay beliefs, they should be done the business of government.” Danger Of “Weaponizing Antisemitism” The staff attorney for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Chris Godshall-Bennett, who is Jewish, provided this assessment: “In weaponizing antisemitism by equating it with criticism of Israel, this bill evades the fundamental principles of free expression and academic freedom. As a Jewish person, who stands hand-in-hand with my Palestinian brothers and sisters, and who works daily against anti-Arab hate, I found this weaponization of my identity particularly disgusting. Criticism of Zionism and of the Israeli government is not antisemitism and conflating this only serves to provide cover for Israel’s ongoing human rights abuses in violation of international law…” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) strongly condemned the House of Representatives for passing this legislation (H.R. 6090) which, it declared, threatens to censor political speech critical of Israel on college campuses under the guise of addressing antisemitism. Christopher Zanders, director of ACLU’s Democracy and Technology Policy Division declared that “The House’s approval of this misguided and harmful bill is a direct attack on the First Amendment. Addressing rising antisemitism is critically important, but criticizing America’s free speech rights is not the way to solve the problem. This bill would throw the full weight of the federal government behind an effort to stifle criticism of Israel and risks politicizing the enforcement of federal civil rights statutes precisely when their robust protections are most needed. The Senate must block this bill that undermines the First Amendment protections before it is too late.” As a recent ACLU letter to Congress made clear, a federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded entities, and the Antisemitism Awareness Act is not needed to protect Jewish students from discrimination. Additionally, as the Supreme Court ruled more than fifty years ago in the landmark decision of Healy v. James, “This Court leaves no room for the view that, because of the acknowledged need for order, First Amendment protections should apply with less force on college campuses than in the community at large. Quite to the contrary, the vigilant protection of Constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of America’s schools.” “Netanyahu Making Israel Radioactive” Many of Israel’s longtime supporters are expressing dismay over recent events. In a column, “Netanyahu is making Israel Radioactive” (New York Times, March 12, 2024), columnist Thomas Friedman writes: “Israel today is in grave danger, with enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, Israel should be enjoying the sympathy of much of the world. But it is not. Because of the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition have been conducting the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, Israel is becoming radioactive…”. Friedman argues that “I fear it is about to get worse…No fair-minded person could deny Israel the right of self-defense after the Hamas attack…But no fair-minded person can look at the Israeli campaign…that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza…and not conclude that something has gone terribly wrong there. The dead include thousands of children, and the survivors many orphans… This is a stain on the Jewish state…Netanyahu has sent the IDF into Gaza without a coherent plan for governing it after any Hamas dismantling or cease-fire…Israel has a prime minister who apparently would rather see Gaza devolve into Somalia, ruled by warlords…than partner with the Palestinian Authority or any legitimate broad-based non-Hamas Palestinian governing body because his far-right Cabinet allies also dream of Israel controlling all of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, including Gaza, and will oust him from power if he does.” In an important and much discussed article entitled “We Need an Exodus from Zionism” (The Guardian April 24, 2024), Naomi Klein, a Guardian columnist and director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia, writes: “I’ve been thinking about Moses and his rage when he came down from the Mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. It is about false idols, about the human tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent.” Worshipping A False Idol In Klein’s view, “Too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again… Zionism is a false idol that has taken the idea of the promised land and turned it onto a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate. It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of Justice and emancipation from slavery —-the story of Passover itself—-and turned them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, road maps for ethnic cleansing and genocide.” The whole concept of a “promised land” has, Klein declares, become “a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the promised land — a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe ——and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnic state… Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba…Zionism has brought us to our current moment of cataclysm and it is time that we said it clearly: it has always been leading here….It is a false idol that has led far too many of our people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core Commandments: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet…We seek to elevate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid.” More and more One-time advocates of Zionism have moved away from this position. One of these is Daniel Boyarin, professor of Talmudic Culture Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. In his book, “The No-State Solution, A Jewish Manifesto” (Yale University Press), he writes, “I was a Zionist in my youth. In those years, I thought of myself as a left-wing Zionist. I was very active in Habonim (a Socialist Zionist youth movement). I think I ultimately caught the leftism and socialism more than the Zionism. And when it became clear to me that I had to make a choice, I finally realized I had to let the Zionism go. That choice came when Yitzhak Rabin stated that the Israeli Army should break the legs of Palestinian kids who threw stones at soldiers. I asked at that time, what is this cruel idea of breaking the arms and legs of little boys? And somebody explained to me that this was necessary in order to maintain the state. I said, if that’s necessary…then the state is clearly a wrong thing…I remember the first time I wanted to say I was an anti-Zionist…. I couldn’t say the words. That’s how hard it was for me.” For Dr. Boyarin, “…the dilemma is how to maintain a truly, vital, authentic, rich, lively and compelling Jewish cultural life without falling into the kinds of nationalism and ethnocentrism that we find all over the world today.” Zionism Was a Minority View Zionism, many now forget, has, before the Holocaust, always been a minority view among Jews. It seems likely that it is on its way to becoming a minority view once again. Only during the period of the Holocaust, when Jews were endangered by Nazism, did the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine gain support. The fact that Palestine was already fully populated was largely ignored. Deena Dallasheh, a historian of Palestine and Israel who has taught at Columbia University and Rice University, told the New York Times ((Feb. 4, 2024) that, “The Holocaust was a horrible massacre committed by Europeans. But I don’t think the Palestinians figure that they will have to pay for it. Yet the world sees this as an acceptable equation. Orientalist and colonial ideology were very much at the heart of thinking, that while we Europeans and the U.S. were part of this massive human tragedy, we are going to fix it at the expense of someone else. And the someone else is not important because they are Arabs. They’re Palestinians and thus constructed as not important.” Most Jews historically believed that their Jewish identity rests on their religious faith, not any national identification. Jews in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, Italy and other countries never viewed themselves living in “exile,” as Zionist philosophy holds. Instead, they believe that their religion and nationality are separate and distinct. The God they believe in is a universal God, not tied to a particular geographic site in the Middle East. An early leader of Reform Judaism, Rabbi Abraham Geiger, pointed out in the 19th century that the underlying essence of Judaism was ethical monotheism. The Jewish people were a religious community destined to carry on the mission to “serve as a light to the nations,” to bear witness to God and His moral law. The dispersion of the Jews was not a punishment for their sins, but part of God’s plan whereby they were to disseminate the universal message of ethical monotheism. Not A Nation but A Religious Community In 1885, Reform rabbis meeting in Pittsburgh adopted a platform which declared, “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community.” In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a resolution disapproving of any attempt to establish a Jewish state and declaring that, “America is our Zion.” In 1904, The American Israelite declared, “There is not one solitary native Jewish-American who is an advocate of Zionism.” To the question of whether Jews constitute “a people,” Yeshayahua Leibowitz, the Orthodox Jewish thinker and long-time Hebrew University professor, provides this assessment: “The historical Jewish people was defined neither as a race , nor a people of this country or that, nor as a people which speaks the same language, but as the people of Torah Judaism and its commandments…The words spoken by Rabbi Saadia Gaon (882-942) more than a thousand years ago: ‘Our nation exists only within the Torah’ have not only a normative but also an empirical meaning. They testified to a historical reality whose power could be felt up until the 19th century. It was then that the fracture which has not ceased to widen with time, first occurred: the fissure between Jewishness and Judaism.” An early leader of the American Council for Judaism, Rabbi Irving Reichart of San Francisco, made his first significant declaration of opposition to Zionism in a January 1936 sermon: “If my reading of Jewish history is correct, Israel took upon itself the yoke of the law not in Palestine, but in the wilderness at Mt. Sinai and by far the greater part of its deathless and distinguished contribution to world culture was produced not in Palestine but in Babylon and the lands of the Dispersion. Jewish states may rise and fall, as they have risen and fallen in the past, but the people of Israel will continue to minister at the altar of the Most High God in all the lands in which they dwell…There is too dangerous a parallel between the insistence of some Zionist spokesmen upon nationality and race and blood, and similar pronouncements by Fascist leaders in Europe.” Zionism: A Dangerous Wrong Turn In America at the present time, Zionism looks to more and more Jewish Americans like a dangerous wrong turn. Those who resisted Zionism from the beginning appear to have been prophetic in their warnings and misgivings. Let us hope that prophetic, universal Judaism will be restored. *