[Salon] An Exploration Of The Long History Of American Jewish Opposition To Zionism - Guest Post

[Salon] An Exploration Of The Long History Of American Jewish Opposition To Zionism - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail This article will appear in the Fall 2024 ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism. An Exploration Of The Long History Of American Jewish Opposition To Zionism By Allan C. Brownfeld ———————————————————————————————-—————————- In “The Threshold of Dissent” (New York University Press), Marjorie N. Feld, professor of history at Babson College, shows that today’s vocal debates among Jewish Americans over Israel and Zionism are simply the latest chapter in a history that stretches to the 19th century. She brings alive the dissenters of the past who have often been forgotten—-and now seem increasingly wise in their assessment. Throughout much of the twentieth century, the organized American Jewish community projected a unified position in support of both Israel and Zionism. This public display of unanimity was, in fact, “a manufactured consensus, as Jewish leaders increasingly discounted and marginalized dissent,” Feld notes. “They often punished those who criticized Israel…or who openly rejected Zionism.” In Feld’s view, “The lack of rigorous and respected scholarship on Jewish critics of Zionism in the United States has had far-reaching implications…In the last ten years, shifting sentiments toward Zionism and Israel offer a chilling corrective to the imposed Zionist consensus that is largely still supported by the mainstream Jewish communal leaders. There is a growing understanding of the costs of imposing this consensus, of maintaining a low threshold of tolerance for intracommunal debate over Israel.” Israel’s Diminishing Role Today, Feld points out, “IAmong younger American Jews, Israel plays a diminishing role in their Jewish identity. American Jews are more fractured than ever before about Israel…This evidence suggests that the forced American Jewish consensus on Zionism actually works against communal interests, as many young Jews no longer see their worldviews …reflected in mainstream Jewish communal organizations and, as a result, may choose to leave Jewish belonging behind.” This book, Feld writes, “documents and analyzes how American Jewish Zionist leaders attempted to marginalize many voices of Jewish dissent. In our current political environment, many seek to equate on-the-rise sentiments of anti-Zionism with antisemitism….these tactics and debates are not new…opening up conversations on Zionism lends itself to greater pluralism, even democratization , within American Jewish life.” Reform Judaism, Feld points out, opposed Jewish nationalism from the beginning. In Its 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, a group of Reform rabbis declared that Judaism was a religion of universal values, not a nationality. Beyond this, she writes, these Reform rabbis “recognized both Christianity and Islam as what they called ‘daughter religions of Judaism’ and as sharing a ‘providential mission’ in the ‘spreading of monotheistic and moral truth.’ The document made clear that Reform Jews in the United States would identify as a religious community only…Reform leaders…insisted that the return to the land of Zion embedded in the Jewish liturgy was a spiritual and not a literal journey.” Jewish Opposition To The Balfour Declaration In March 1919, a group of prominent Jewish Americans presented a petition to President Woodrow Wilson to protest the creation of a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine which was called for in the Balfour Declaration. It rejected Jewish nationalism and held against the founding of any state on the basis of religion and/or race. Among those signing the petition were New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs, E.M. Baker, president of the New York Stock Exchange, Henry Morganthau, Sr., former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, and Rep. Julius Klein of California. Their views represented the dominant American Jewish view on Palestine and Zionism. Later, as antisemitism grew in Eastern Europe and later in Germany, many American Jews, including Reform Jews, became sympathetic to Zionism. The American Council for Judaism, Feld shows, was established to keep alive the original Reform Jewish philosophy and worldview. At the Council’s founding meeting, Feld writes of Rabbi Morris Lazaron, longtime leader of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation and a former Zionist: “He identified himself as a former member of the Zionist Organization of America, who ‘left the Organization because I could not accept its philosophy, its aims and its methods.’ At this founding meeting on June 1,1942, Rabbi Lazaron read a moving speech. He spoke first of the immediate need to defeat the Axis powers…He declared, ‘a state based on race or creed was fundamentally wrong and indeed is the antithesis of one of the principles for why this war is being fought.” Writing in Life Magazine (June 28, 1943), Council president Lessing J. Rosenwald titled his article, “Why Americans of Jewish Faith are Opposed to the Establishment of a Jewish State.” Feld reports that, Edith G.Rosenwald “recounted years later that the magazine had ‘carried an article by King Ibn Saud (first king of Saudi Arabia) and another by Zionist leader Dr. Stephen Wise on the Palestine problem,’ adding that Lessing ‘wanted to make clear that there was a third viewpoint.’ She saw this, her husband’s column, as the Council’s first ‘walk on the stage of history.’” Equal Rights And Responsibilities For All In 1946, Rosenwald appeared on the popular radio program hosted by journalist Tex McCrary. He asserted that Palestine should be a “state where Jews, Moslems and Christians can worship as they see fit and are accorded equal rights and responsibilities.” The organized Jewish community, Feld reports, did its best to silence the Council’s opposition to Zionism and create the false impression that the Jewish community was united behind Zionist goals: “In 1944, leaders of the Zionist Organization of America formed a group originally called the Committee to Combat the American Council for Judaism, later the Committee on Unity for Palestine, with 112 local branches…that wrote ‘hundreds of thousands of pieces of pro-Zionist literature.’” Feld highlights other prominent Jewish critics of Zionism such as Yiddish language journalist William Zukerman, who started the English-language Jewish Newsletter. Zukerman disputed the central role of Zionism in Jewish life, insisting that Jews “should remain loyal to their nation of origin, where he believed their own Jewish future should lie,” she writes. Organized resistance to the likes of Zukerman and others who challenged Zionism, or expressed concern for the rights of Palestinians, was fierce. Feld points to the fact that “in the 1950s, Zionist Jewish leaders in the U.S. joined with Israeli diplomats to limit public discourse and deny funding and access to American Jews such as Zukerman.” The attacks on Jewish critics of Zionism became brutal. In 1951, Shlomo Katz, editor of the Labor Zionist journal Jewish Frontier attacked Zukerman by suggesting a link between him and the kapos (Jewish prisoners who supervised forced labor in Nazi concentration camps). Policing Criticism Of Israel Feld warns that policing criticism of Israel within the Jewish community has “ultimately weakened Jewish communal life” and detracted from Jewish efforts to promote social Justice. “if mainstream Jewish communal organizations continue to hold fast to unqualified support for Israel…will young American Jews continue to look at American Jewish life and find if wanting? she asks. “And…how would future historians assess the impact of this forced consensus on the safety of Jews and all others.” How will future generations assess this period in American Jewish life? Feld concludes this way: “Across the last century, American Jewish Zionist leaders enforced a threshold of dissent by marginalizing progressive American Jews who were able to see Palestinian suffering. Theirs is a fraught and difficult history and one entangled with immense destruction in the name of Jewish safety. If mainstream Jewish communal organizations continue to hold fast to unqualified support for Israel, insisting that American Jews and American politicians subscribe to a forced Zionist consensus, will young American Jews continue to look af American Jewish life and find it wanting? And, finally, how might future historians assess the impact of this forced consensus on the safety of Jews and all others?” Marjorie Feld has written an important book, properly telling the story of American Jewish opposition to Zionism which others have largely ignored. It is a subject to which more and more scholars, fortunately, are beginning, to turn their attention. # ——————————————- Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and is editor of ISSUES, The quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.