Remembering A Lifetime of Advancing Prophetic
Judaism - Free of Nationalism And
Politicization
Allan C. Brownfeld
Issues
June 2020
Several years ago, my son and daughter-in-law gave me a book designed for
grandfathers to tell the story of their life. I put off answering the many
questions for some time but, with help of my daughter, have finally turned
my attention to it. I hope that in future years my five grandchildren—-who
range in age —from almost two to thirteen years—-will find it useful. It has
caused me to reflect on what lessons might be learned.
Several months ago, I wrote a column with some reflections on my early
years. My memory goes back to World War II when, as a small child I had an
army uniform which I wore in pictures with my uncles who were in real
uniforms. One of them fought in the Battle of the Bulge. I remember when the
war ended. We had a house at the beach, and I marched in a parade with other
children. On the day Franklin Roosevelt died, we heard news reports on the
radio in our living room. My mother said, “This is important. You will
remember this.” And I have.
In that column I recalled that my friends as a child represented many
backgrounds and religions. Our local newsstand in New York featured
newspapers in many languages, Il Progresso in Italian, The Forward in
Yiddish, Aufbau in German, and the Irish Echo in Gaelic. Our neighbors came
from many places—-Poland, Germany, Greece and a variety of other European
countries. Everyone was white.
Legal Segregation
I did not encounter legal segregation until I went to the College of William
and Mary in Virginia. There, I saw “white” and “colored” signs for the first
time, but in Virginia, for the first time, I encountered many black people.
In New York, I encountered almost none. Segregation then characterized all
of America, but it took different forms in different places.
In college, I wrote a weekly column in The Flat Hat, the school’s weekly
newspaper. I have been writing columns ever since. My political views were
conservative—-but what was considered conservative then is quite different
from the philosophy expressed by those who use that term today. As Vice
President of a student group, I was involved in inviting the first black
speaker to William and Mary. The president of the college called me to his
office and said, “Allan, I read your column. You are a conservative. Why are
you doing this?” I responded, “Racism is not something I want to conserve.”
Conservatives were supposed to believe in freedom and limited government. If
Virginia, is a free society, I argued, what right does the state have to
tell people whom to marry, or restaurant owners whom they may serve?
I became College Secretary of the Young Republican Federation of Virginia. I
was a freshman in college when President Eisenhower sent troops to integrate
the schools in Little Rock. Republicans in Virginia opposed segregation. It
was the Democrats who closed schools rather than integrate.
Religious Thinking
What I did not discuss in that column was my religious thinking, which has
involved a lifelong association with the American Council for Judaism. It
deserved a longer discussion. Just as I was seeking an approach to political
life that embodied the values in which I believed, so my thinking about
religion caused me to become concerned about the nature of the Judaism I
encountered.
When I was preparing for my Bar Mitzvah, I became confused about what
Judaism really embodied. Religion, I slowly came to understand, attempted to
answer questions about what a worthy life was, about the nature of the
world, about how one should live. Yet, what I encountered in the synagogue
was a narrowness of vision, a division of the world between “us” and “them.”
This contradicted the belief that God was the creator of men and women of
every race and nation, and that as their Creator, He viewed them as equal.
The focus of the Judaism I encountered was not upon God and eternal values
but upon the State of Israel. An Israeli flag stood near the altar of the
synagogue. Why, I wondered, was this the case? Were we not Americans? Was
the synagogue not a place to worship God, rather than a foreign state——or
any state? This seemed reminiscent of idolatry, as in the Biblical Story of
the Golden Calf. We kept hearing that Jews were the “chosen” people of God.
I wondered, for what exactly where they “chosen?”
In High school, learning about different religions, I wanted to discover if
there was not a Judaism which existed free of nationalism and
politicization. In the days before the internet, I somehow discovered that
there was indeed such a Judaism, and it was being kept alive by the American
Council for Judaism. I called the Council on the phone and was invited to
their offices on East 57th Street in Manhattan. On my first visit, I had a
long lunch with Larry Margolis, then Eastern Regional Director. I also met
Rabbi Elmer Berger, then executive Director of the Council, and two other
rabbis on the Council staff, David Goldberg and Samuel Halevi Baron. Rabbi
Goldberg had been the first Jewish chaplain the U.S. Navy during World War
1. Slowly, a group of young people became involved in what became a youth
group. These included Ned and Pete Hanauer and Eliot Bernat.
Meeting Council Members.
During several summers, we drove around the country, visiting Council
members who gathered young people in their communities together to discuss
the nature of Judaism and how it was being corrupted by Zionism. I made many
life-long friends as a result of these trips. One of them was Marjorie Arsht
of Houston, Texas. Marjorie was an extraordinary person, a graduate of the
Sorbonne in Paris who later ran for the Texas State Senate. For one summer
when I was in law school, I had a job as a reporter for the Houston Press.
Marjorie insisted that I stay in her house, rather than in an apartment as I
had planned. Through her I met a variety of interesting people including the
labor leader and later congresswoman Barbara Jordan, and future president
George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara, all of whom were friends of Marjorie.
When Bush was elected president, Marjorie came to Washington to serve in the
Department of Housing and Urban Development.
After college and law school, I worked on Capitol Hill, in both the Senate
and the House of Representatives. I remember when the FBI was conducting a
review of my application for a top-secret security clearance, required for
my position on the staff of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. At
that time Rabbi Berger was retired and living in Florida. He called me one
day to report that two men in dark suits had approached him on the beach to
discuss me and review the years he had known me.
I wrote a regular column which appeared in “Roll Call,” the newspaper of
Capitol Hill, and later in newspapers around the country. During these
years, my involvement with the Council continued. I attended annual
conferences, which involved a variety of interesting participants, including
the historian Arnold Toynbee and Socialist leader Norman Thomas. I met a
variety of interesting and idealistic men and women who were active in the
Council. One of these was Klaus Herrmann, a native of Germany, whose family
made its way to Shanghai before World War 11. When he visited Washington, I
introduced him to a Chinese friend of mine. Klaus immediately started
speaking in fluent Chinese.
Editor of “Issues”
I continued writing for “Issues.” In 1989, I became editor of Council
publications and served as executive director of the Council. In this
capacity, I met and worked with many idealistic and committed men and women.
Among these was the Council’s former president, Alan Stone, and its current
president, Steve Naman. Thus, my involvement in the Council and helping to
advance its philosophy of Judaism has been a lifetime effort.
One of the first books I read advancing the Council’s view of Judaism was
Rabbi Berger’s “A Partisan History of Judaism,” published in 1952. He writes
that, “Judaism was not a religion revealed in perfection to a limited and
well-defined nationalistic group at Mt. Sinai. Judaism has evolved from a
very basic, primitive and elementary tribalism that one would expect to find
among people who lived some three thousand years ago. From that period to
the time of the prophets, Judaism went through a period of refinement until
it developed the idea——which I believe to be its really majestic and unique
contribution—-of ethical monotheism, of universal values which were
applicable to all men.”
The God of the early Israelites was, Berger points out, “associated with a
desert way of life. This is not yet monotheism, which means one God for all
humanity. These Israelites, or Hebrews, would never have claimed that theirs
was the only god in the world; it was just their god. This is called
henotheism, which means this god for me and any number of gods for anybody
else. We are not yet at the stage of any elevated prophetic concept, either
of God or religion. .”
Emergence of the Prophets
Before the emergence of the prophets, in Berger’s view, “There was little
about the religion of these Israelites that was either much better or much
worse than the religion of their neighbors. For example, such institutions
as sacred prostitution existed among these people...in primitive religions,
men were concerned with their gods not in a moral sense but only as the gods
affected the productivity of the soil and the fertility of the animals which
they herded and which were their capital.”
Suddenly, in the midst of this corrupt civilization, there emerged a group
of individuals who began to protest. “That protest,” writes Berger, “was
phrased with moral indignation and spoken in the name of a God Of justice
and righteousness. The result was to provide the chapter of real genius in
Judaism. In this protest against social injustices combined with lofty moral
values related to a universal God, Judaism took its place as one of the
great spiritual forces of mankind.”
The Prophets declared that theirs was a decadent society about to be
destroyed. This was a revolutionary concept. To proclaim to people that
despite their material blessings and meticulous observance of the
formalities of religion, they were doomed to catastrophe and lacked the
favor of God. The genius of the Prophets, writes Berger, can be attributed
to the fact that “through religion, the moral values which they perceived
have become the foundation stones of Western civilization. With these
Prophets, Judaism left the level of a religion attached to a cult and
formula and became a faith in moral values, demonstrable in the history of
man and acceptable as rational truths for society.”
The Prophet Amos
At the National sanctuary of Beth El in the northern kingdom, speaking to a
congregation gathered to practice the rites of a materialistic religion, the
Prophet Amos addressed the Congregation: “I hate, I despise your feasts and
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though you offer Me (God)
burnt offerings md your meal offerings, I will not accept them. Neither will
I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from Me the
noise of thy songs. (meaning the liturgy chanted by the Levites in the
temple) and let Me not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run as
waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
Some years later, Jeremiah spoke similar words to the people of the southern
kingdom of Judah. Standing in the courtyard of the Temple in Jerusalem, he
said: “Amend your ways and your doings and I will cause you to dwell in
this place...If ye thoroughly amend your ways and doings, if ye thoroughly
execute justice between a man and his neighbor, if ye oppress not the
stranger and the fatherless and the widow, let not a wise man glory in his
wisdom; neither let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man
glory in his riches. But let him that glorieth glory in this: that I am the
Lord which exercises loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the
earth; for in these things I delight, Saith the Lord.”
The words of Amos, Jeremiah and the other Prophets, Berger pointed out,
represented “...the first time that men talked of religion in terms of
opposition to the oppression of other people and in terms of social values
and human relationships. In the earlier period none of these considerations
mattered. All that proved the validity of a religion was whether a people
were able to harvest its crops and win its wars. If it failed in these
things, they cast around for another god...here, however, was a man who
began to talk of religion in terms of the relationships of man to man, and
of man to society....The Prophets were the first in history to use language
and to express ideas of this kind. And in that time in the evolution of man
they were iconoclastic, revolutionary ideas.... Religion is now interpreted
in terms of ethical values and human relationships.”
Reform Judaism’s Universal Vision
Reform Judaism, as it evolved in America, embraced the universal vision of
the Prophets and rejected the nationalistic ethnocentrism which
characterized Judaism’s early days, and which re-emerged in the 19th century
in the form of Zionism. Rabbi Berger, referring to Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise,
an early leader of American Reform Judaism, laments that, “The Reform
Judaism which Wise conceived and which turned its back upon the medieval
notion of a Jewish “nation” now indulges prayers for Israel Independence
Day, teaches Zionism in its religious school textbooks, and advises that
such ceremonial Hebrew as is still retained in the prayers follow the
Israeli pronunciation.”
This book had an influence on my thinking. I understood that the American
Council for Judaism was committed to the early ideas of American Reform
Judaism, rejecting nationalism and embracing the universal moral and ethical
tradition of the Prophets.
When I was in college, I took an English course titled “The Bible as
Literature.” One of the lectures was on the subject: “If the Jews are the
‘chosen people,’ What Were They Chosen For.” Were they chosen for special
responsibilities or certain rewards?
This question has been one I have thought about for some time. Over the
years, I have come to the conclusion my professor suggested, that Jews were
“chosen” for certain responsibilities, not for certain rewards. This goes
back to the Prophets and their interpretation of chosenness, which
represented a change in the very essence of Judaism. Under the covenant,
which was modeled on a typical Middle Eastern treaty between ruler and
ruled, God promised to bless and protect his faithful people. With the help
of the Prophets, the chosen people came to understand that their obligations
might be weightier than their privileges. This change came at the same time
as the transformation of the tribal God of the armies to a universal God of
compassion. The covenant, they came to understand, represented
responsibilities, not privileges.
Responsibilities, Not Privileges
According to the Prophets, Amos, Hosea and Isaiah, being chosen by God no
longer meant privilege, but responsibilities. This marks the beginning of a
new religious awareness which began with Amos, denying the existence of all
gods but Yahweh, yet stressing the importance of the chosen people, the
prophet reconciled Jewish exceptionalism with a belief in a universal deity.
This is a sharp break with the tribal God of Deuteronomy, who exalts Israel
above all other peoples.
Deut, 7: 1-6 declares: “When the Lord your God brings you into the land
which you are entering to take possession of it and clear away many nations
before you...Then you must utterly destroy them ...For you are a people holy
to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people of his
own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.”
The Prophets insisted that Israel was chosen for a purpose other than
destroying its enemies. When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, this
experience led to the sense of a universal God, a God for all nations. The
survival of Judaism in exile further validated the sense of holiness.
Jeremiah wrote to the exiles in Babylon urging them to adjust to their new
circumstances: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their
produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. ..Seek the welfare of the
city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf,
for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jer. 29: 5-7)
Transportable God
The concept of the transportable God, the God who was everywhere, took root.
The Babylonian exile distilled the essence of Judaism. The belief in Yahweh
had become strong enough to survive the exile. The Israelites discovered
that they could live in any land and worship God. The loss of Jerusalem
marked the end of the National, tribal God as well as the temple cult. They
came to understand that the God who loves all peoples does not desire temple
sacrifice, but compassion and social justice, “this was the birth of true
religion,” writes Rabbi Allan Tarshish in his book, “Not By Power, The Story
of the Growth of Judaism.” He writes that, “By setting down great concepts
that changed religion from tribalism and nationalism to universalism, from
ritual to moral action they kept Judaism alive and laid down the foundation
of all modern religions. The Prophets taught that the one God of the
Israelites was God of all the world. ‘For my house shall be called a house
of prayer for all peoples.’ {Isaiah 56: 6). And the Jews were to bring this
message to all the peoples of the world.”
According to the Prophets, the Jews had a mission. They were to become God’s
servants and spread the truth about justice and mercy. This is a divine
election that goes beyond any tribal theology of nationalism. It embraces
the idea that Jews were to carry God’s message to the world. The idea of
confining themselves to one small place was completely alien to their
thinking. That would have made the Jews like everyone else and made it
impossible to fulfill their mission. This is an extension, writes Tarshish,
“of the original charge to Abraham to be a blessing.”
While much of Judaism continued to adhere to a pre-prophetic idea of
“chosenness,” it was Reform Judaism which came to view Jews as a “mission
people,” whereby morality became the Jewish mission. It rejected the idea of
“exile” and the desire to reestablish a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine.
The first Reform prayer book eliminated all references to Jews being in
exile and to a Messiah who would miraculously restore Jews throughout the
world to the historic Land of Israel and who would rebuild the Temple in
Jerusalem. The prayer book eliminated all prayers for a return to Zion.
Progressive Revelation
Perhaps the most prominent of the early Reform leaders in 19th century
Germany was Rabbi Abraham Geiger. He argued that Judaism developed through
an evolutionary process that had begun with God’s revelation to the Hebrew
prophets. The revelation was progressive; new truth became available to
every generation. The underlying and unchangeable 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
punishment for their sins, but part of God’s plan whereby they were To
disseminate the universal message of ethical monotheism.
In 1885, Reform rabbis, meeting in Pittsburgh, wrote an eight-point platform
that one participant called “the most succinct expression of the theology of
the Reform movement that had ever been published in the world.” The platform
emphasized that Reform Judaism denied nationalism of any variety. It
declared, “We recognize in the era of universal culture of heart and
intellect, the approaching realization of Israel’s great messianic hope for
the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice and peace among all men.
We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and
therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship
under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning
the Jewish state.”
In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbi’s adopted a resolution
disapproving of any attempt to establish a Jewish state. The resolution
declared, “Zion was a precious possession of the past...as such it is a holy
memory, but it is not our hope of the future. America is our Zion.”
“What Are The Jews?”
One of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century,
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel, who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King,
Jr. for civil rights for all people, said that, “Judaism is not a religion
of space and does not worship the soil. So, too, the State of Israel is not
the climax of Jewish history, but a test of the integrity of the Jewish
people and the competence of Israel.”
The man most prominently identified with Reform Judaism in 19th century
America was Isaac Mayer Wise, a rabbi who came to the United States from
Bohemia. He saw American democracy as the fulfillment, in practice of the
Prophetic principles which, to him, were the important elements in Judaism.
In 1854 he said, “Moses formed one pole and the American Revolution the
other, of an axis around which revolved the political history of 33
centuries.” He considered America the “universal republic.” And Judaism, he
held, was the “universal religion.” He believed that, “In its pure and
denationalized form,” all religions of men must come to the basic truths of
Judaism. In Wise’s view, “Only that portion of Judaism which will and must
become the common good of all men, is religion to us, and only in this
respect are we Jews. All other laws, ordinances, customs and usages ...have
a secondary importance to us...Legalism is not Judaism, nor is mysticism
religion.”
Jesus, “The most influential rabbi in history.”
In the view of early Reform Jewish leaders, the major religions of the
Western world and the Middle East—-Judaism, Christianity and Islam——had a
great deal in common. Rabbi Evan Moffic called Jesus “the most influential
rabbi in history. We have almost 3 billion Christians in the world, and thus
Jesus has been the most influential rabbi in terms of world historical
impact.” Jewish scholars note that the common poetic expression, “Our father
in heaven” was used literally by Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer. The early
Reform Jewish leader Emil G. Hirsch said of Jesus, “he is one of us.” Hirsch
was one of several liberal rabbis, including Kaufman Kohler, who sought to
place Jesus in the pantheon of Jewish prophets and teachers. They argued
that the Sermon on the Mount should be studied at Jewish religious schools.
As an expression of the Jewish religious tradition.
In 1879, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise wrote of Paul Of Tarsus: “Paul conceived the
idea of carrying into effect what all the Prophets and all the pious
Israelites of all ages hoped and expected, the denationalization of the
Hebrew ideal and its promulgation in the form of universal religion among
the Gentiles, so that the whole human family might be united beneath the
banner inscribed with the motto: ‘One god and one humanity.’”
In his book “The First Christian,” the Rev. A. Powell Davies, a Unitarian
minister, asks what it means when a person calls himself a Christian. Does
it mean they are followers of what Jesus preached, which was Judaism, or the
religion about Jesus which was later established by Paul. Rabbi John Rayner,
for many years a leader of Liberal Judaism in the United Kingdom noted that,
“The religious beliefs and values Jesus affirmed and taught were those of
Judaism and not any other religion. In short, he was Jewish through and
through. And the idea of founding a new and different religion never crossed
his mind.”
Prophetic Universalism
Judaism would have continued to move toward the prophetic universalism of
the early Reformers, it is widely believed, if it was not for the rising
anti-Semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century
followed by the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s. In the wake of the
Holocaust, many Jews began to look positively upon the idea of creating a
Jewish state in Palestine as a refuge for the victims of persecution. Jewish
organizations in the U.S. which had always opposed Zionism, a philosophy
which held that Jews living outside of Palestine were in “exile” and urged
all Jews to emigrate, began to view it more favorably. Slowly, even Reform
Judaism embraced it. The American Council for Judaism was created in 1942 to
maintain the philosophy of a universal Judaism, free of nationalism and
politicization. American Jews, they proclaimed, were American by nationality
and Jews by religion, just as other Americans were Protestant, Catholic or
Muslim. In his keynote address, Rabbi David Phillipson declared that Zionism
and Reform Judaism were incompatible: “Reform Judaism is spiritual, Zionism
is political. The outlook of Zionism is a corner of Eastern Asia.” The first
pledge of major financial backing was made by Aaron Strauss, a nephew and
heir of Levi Strauss of blue jeans fame.
An early leader of the Council, and one I got to know during my early years
with the organization, was Rabbi Morris Lazaron, who served from 1915 to
1946 as rabbi of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. He was originally a
supporter of cultural Zionism, but later altered his views. Slowly, he
discovered that Zionist nationalism was not different from other forms of
nationalism: “The Jewish nationalist philosophy of separateness as a people
who would always and inevitably be rejected because they were Jews boldly
asserted itself. The idea seems to have been to break down the self-
confidence and opposition to Jewish nationalism...Behind the mask of Jewish
settlement, one can see the specter of the foul thing which moves Germany
and Italy. Behind the camouflage of its unquestioned appeal to Jewish
feeling, one can hear a chorus of ‘Heil.’ This is not for Jews—-Reform,
Conservative or Orthodox.” Speaking at the January 1937 annual meeting of
the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in New Orleans, Lazaron declared:
“Judaism cannot accept as the instrument of salvation the very philosophy of
nationalism which is leading the world to destruction. Shall we condemn it
as Italian or German, but accept it as Jewish?”
Rabbis who joined the Council led some of the nation’s leading
congregations. Among them were Samuel Goldenson of New York, Irving Reichart
of San Francisco, David Marx of Atlanta, Edward Calisch of Richmond, Henry
Cohen of Galveston, Samuel Koch of Seattle and Julian Feibelman of New
Orleans. The Council also recruited many nationally prominent laypersons
including Judge Marcus Sloss of the California Supreme Court, Herbert and
Stanley Marcus of the Nieman-Marcus company in Dallas, Admiral Lewis L.
Strauss, and Alfred M. Cohen, president of B’nai B’rith.
Lessing J. Rosenwald
The first president of the Council, who I got to know, was Lessing J.
Rosenwald, who had retired as chairman of Sears Roebuck and Co., which was
founded by his father, the respected philanthropist Julian Rosenwald who,
among many other things, worked with Booker T. Washington to build schools
for black children in the South after the Civil War. Both Julius and Lessing
Rosenwald were firm believers in the principles of social justice advocated
by early Reform Jewish spokesmen. They found Jewish nationalism to be
contrary to the universal Prophetic Judaism to which they adhered.
Rabbi Reichart 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
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.”
When the American Council for Judaism was established, Judah Magnes ,
chancellor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote a letter endorsing
its statement of principles: “It is true that Jewish nationalism tends to
confuse people not because it is secular and not religious , but because
this nationalism is unhappily chauvinistic and narrow and terroristic in the
best style of Eastern European nationalism.”
German Romantic Nationalism
From 1943 to 1948, the Council conducted its public campaign against
Zionism. One of the speakers at its 1945 conference was Hans Kohn, a one-
time German Zionist associated with the University in Exile in New York. He
declared, “The Jewish nationalist philosophy has developed entirely under
German influence, the German romantic nationalism with the emphasis on
blood, race and descent as the most determining factor in human life, its
historicizing attempt to connect with a legendary past 2,000 or so years
ago, its emphasis on folk as a mythical body, the source of civilization.”
In his book, “Jews Against Zionism, The American Council for Judaism, 1941-
1948,” professor Thomas Kolsky writes: “The anti-Zionism of the American
Council for Judaism represented an American Jewish tradition older than
Zionism. Most of the leaders and the rank and file of the ACJ were highly
acculturated Reform Jews, who rejected Jewish nationalism and defined
themselves as a purely religious group. They opposed Zionism not only as
self-segregation tantamount to a return to the ghetto but also fundamentally
contrary to democratic principles.”
In the face of the 1947 partition of Palestine, the Council wished the new
state well, and declared its determination to resist Zionist efforts to
dominate Jewish life in America. The Council was, many have now come to see,
prophetic. Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis University historian and author of the
book “American Judaism,”. Says that, “Everything they (the American Council
for Judaism) prophesied—-dual loyalty, nationalism being evil—has come to
pass.” He states that, “It’s certainly the case that if the Holocaust
underscored the problems of Jewish life in the Diaspora, recent years have
highlighted the point that Zionism is no panacea.”
Nationality and Religion are Separate and Distinct
In January 1948, the Council adopted a statement of principles which
declared in part, “Nationality and religion are separate and distinct. Our
nationality is American, Our religion is Judaism. our homeland is the United
States of America. We reject any concept that Jews are at home only in
Palestine.”
In the book “Reclaiming Judaism From Zionism,” professor Carolyn L. Karcher
says the Council was prophetic in its assessment of where Zionism would
lead. Rejecting the ethnocentric nationalism Zionism embraced, the Council,
she writes, “...promoted democracy, human rights and human solidarity as the
continued alternative to Zionism and the ultimate solution to racial, ethnic
and religious bigotry of all kinds.”
Trivializing Judaism
The more I studied the history of Judaism and its intimate connection with
Christianity and Islam, the more it became clear to me that Zionism, and
those who incorporated it into Judaism in the post-World War ll years, had
trivialized its meaning and essence, and its essential contribution to
mankind, in particular to Western civilization. In his book “the Gifts of
the Jews,” Thomas Cahill writes, “Without the Jews, we would see the world
with different eyes, hear with different ears, and even feel with different
feelings...The people of the Western world, for better or worse, the role of
the West in humanity’s history, is singular. There is simply no one else
remotely like them. Theirs is a unique vocation. Indeed, the very idea of
vocation, of a personal destiny, is a Jewish idea.”
Though the Bible is considered the book of the Western world, its foundation
document, Cahill notes that, “...it actually is a collection of books, a
various library, written entirely in Hebrew over the course of a thousand
years. ...When God reveals his plan of destruction for Sodom and Gomorrah
Abraham attempts to reason with him. ‘Will you really sweep away the
innocent along with the guilty?’ By questioning God, who has gradually been
revealing his awesome grandeur to Abraham, the patriarch exhibits striking
courage that will reappear in his descendants throughout the ages to come. A
veritable tug-of-war ensues, ending with God’s promise is to stay his hand
if as few as ten innocents are found within the walls of those cities.”
Beyond this, Cahill points out, “The Jews gave us a whole new vocabulary of
the spirit, an inner landscape of ideas and feelings that had never been
known before. Over many centuries of trauma. And suffering they came to
believe in one God. Because of their unique belief, monotheism, the Jews
were able to give us the Great Whole, a unified universe that makes sense
and, because of its evident superiority as a world view, completely
overwhelming the warring and contradictory phenomena of polytheism, they
gave us the conscience of the West, the belief that this God, who is one, is
not the God of outward show, but the “still small voice’ of conscience, the
God of compassion, the God who will be there, the Lord who cares about each
of his creatures, especially the human beings he created ‘in his own image.’
And he insists that we do the same.”
Ethnocentrism and Universalism.
The ethnocentrism found in the early books of the Bible, and promoted in
more recent times by Zionism, was superseded by a universalism and concern
for all of humanity which was embraced by Reform Judaism and has been kept
alive by the American Council for Judaism. The gradual universalization of
Jewish ideas can be seen in the story of Ruth, the Moabite, and was foreseen
by Joel, a late prophet: “And it shall come to pass afterward that I shall
pour out my spirit on all humanity. your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old people shall dream dreams, and your young people see visions.”
The Jews, Thomas Cahill concludes, “...gave us the outside and the inside—-
our outlook and our inner life. we can hardly get up in the morning or cross
the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish
hopes. Most of our best words: war, adventure, purpose, unique, individual,
person, history, freedom, progress, hope—-are the gifts of the Jews.”
It was always my view that Judaism’s significant contribution to the world
was being trivialized by Zionism. If it had not been for the Holocaust,
Zionism would have remained a minority view within the Jewish community.
Now, sympathy for Zionism among American Jews is in steady decline and the
classical Reform Jewish commitment to Prophetic Judaism and universalism,
which the American Council for Judaism has kept alive, increasingly
characterizes the views of American Jews, particularly those in the younger
generation.
Israel As a Source of Division
In his book “Trouble in The Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over
Israel,” Professor Dov Waxman of Northeastern University writes: “A historic
change has been taking place in the American Jewish relationship with
Israel. Israel is fast becoming a source of division rather than unity for
American Jewry...This echoes earlier debates about Zionism which occurred
before 1948. Then, as now, there were fierce disagreements among American
Jews and the American Jewish establishment...It was only after Israel’s
founding that the communal consensus came to dominate American Jewish
politics. Thus, from a historical perspective, the pro-Israel consensus that
once reigned within the American Jewish community is the aberration, rather
than the rule. Jewish division on Israel is historically the norm.”
Beyond this, Waxman notes that the overwhelming majority of American Jews,
while wishing Israel well, were never really Zionists: “Classical Zionism
has never had much relevance or appeal to American Jewry. Indeed, the vast
majority of American Jews reject the basic elements of classical Zionism—-
that Diaspora Jews live in exile, that Jewish life in Israel is superior to
life in the Diaspora, and that Diaspora Jewish life is doomed to eventually
disappear. American Jews do not think that they live in exile and they do
not regard Israel as their homeland...For many American Jews, America is
more than just home, it is itself a kind of Zion, an ‘almost promised land’
Zionism has never succeeded in winning over the majority of American Jews.”
Optimism About The Future
I am optimistic about the future. More and more American Jews are expressing
their commitment to social justice, in part, by rejecting Israel’s treatment
of Palestinians. They believe that religion should bring us together, not
divide us. They may not know it, but the Judaism they are embracing is very
much like the Judaism the American Council for Judaism has kept alive. It is
likely to grow and thrive in the future. I hope that when my grandchildren
are old enough to read the book I have prepared—-and this article—-they will
get an idea of their grandfather’s. values and thoughts. I hope they will
live in a better world and will help to make it so. *
|