THE AMERICAN COUNCIL FOR JUDAISM AT 80: A HISTORY
OF ADVANCING PROPHETIC JUDAISM, FREE OF NATIONALISM
Allan C. Brownfeld
Issues
Spring - Summer 2022
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the American Council for Judaism. Since
1942, the Council has advanced the philosophy of Judaism as a religion of
universal values, not a nationality, and has maintained that Americans of Jewish
faith are American by nationality, and Jews by religion, just as other Americans
are Protestant, Catholic or Muslim.
The Council has challenged the Zionist philosophy which holds that Israel is the
“homeland” of all Jews, and that all Jews living outside of Israel are in
“exile.” In doing so, it has contended that its philosophy represents the
thinking of the majority of Jewish Americans, a largely silent―but, in recent
days, increasingly vocal―majority, which is not represented by the organizations
which presume to speak in their name. Clearly, the homeland of American Jews is
the United States.
The Council’s philosophy is much older than the 80 years in which the
organization has been in existence. In 1841, at the dedication of Temple Beth
Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi Gustav Poznanski declared: “This
country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.”
The Hopes of Jews Emigrating to the U.S.
Rabbi Wolfgang Hamburger, for many years a leading member of the Council,
explained the hopes of Jews who emigrated to the U.S., as he had: “They wanted to
sink roots here because here they were not ‘at best tolerated guests in someone
else’s home.’ This was to be their home and their children’s home; it was only
natural that their Judaism would be no more than the faith of a religious
community…And just as they had to adjust themselves to life in the New World, so
their Judaism had to be adapted to the mores of a free society. Such were the
dynamics of Reform Judaism. There was simply no other way to endow Judaism with
meaning and vitality on these shores. The reformers…sloughed off all traditions
which did not fit naturally and harmoniously into their existential
consciousness. They saw no reason for imbuing an outdated hope with spiritual or
symbolic meaning, and therefore created a prayerbook without any reference to the
ancient Temple ritual and Jerusalem. Memories of a national past failed to
sustain their devotion to Judaism, and dreams of a resurrected Jewish nation,
understandable in the oppressive atmosphere of the ghetto, no longer exemplified
the ties which Jews as members of a free society could have to the faith of their
fathers. Jewish particularism and Jewish nationalism simply could not offer a
valid identification for the Jewish citizen of the United States.”
As a result, notes Hamburger, “Classical Reform Judaism emerged as the inevitable
expression of the religious lifestyle of those who chose to be Americans of
Jewish faith. Of necessity, the reformers’ outlook was universalistic; and having
come to a land of promise, their outlook was optimistic. They looked forward not
to the wondrous appearance of a personal Messiah but to the dawn of the Messianic
age when humanity’s hope for truth, justice and peace would be fulfilled. To
their Judaism they ascribed the ‘sacred task to toil for the speedy dawn’ of the
Messianic age, a task that could be met by applying the ethical lessons of
Prophetic Judaism to the conduct of their daily existence. This universal outlook
was clearly mirrored in the Reform service. The prayers were in harmony with the
concerns and aspirations of a Jewish citizen, at home in the land of the free.
And for the sake of clarity and immediacy, they were recited in the vernacular.
The few symbols and rituals which were retained appealed to heart and mind; the
old synagogue tunes, rearranged in the style of the great masters, inspired those
who came to pray. The service was distinguished for its clear structure, a
tranquil atmosphere and the absence of emotionalism.”
1885 Platform Rejects Nationalism
In 1885, a group of Reform rabbis met in Pittsburgh and adopted a platform which
emphasized that Reform Judaism rejected the idea of Jewish “peoplehood” and
nationalism in any variety. It stated, “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 1898, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) 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.”
The issuance of the Balfour Declaration convinced many Reform rabbis of the
necessity to take strong measures to fight Zionism. Rabbi Louis Grossman, the
president of the CCAR, reacted to this document by reaffirming the standard
Reform viewpoint and by reiterating Reform’s opposition “to the idea that
Palestine should be considered the homeland of the Jews,” because “Jews in the
U.S. were an integral part of the American Nation.”
Rising Anti-Semitism in Europe
In the wake of growing anti-Semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe at the end of
the 19th century and the rise of the Nazis in Germany in the nineteen thirties,
many Jews began to look positively upon the idea of creating a Jewish state in
Palestine as a refuge for those being persecuted. Jewish organizations in the
U.S. which had always opposed Zionism began to view it more favorably. In
February 1942, the CCAR, the Reform rabbinical group, reversed its position and
called for a “Jewish army” in Palestine, a direct violation of its 1935
resolution calling for “neutrality” when it came to Zionism.
The American Council for Judaism was created in 1942 to maintain the traditional
philosophy of a universal Judaism free of nationalism and politicization. In his
keynote address to the June 1942 meeting in Atlantic City, Rabbi David Philipson
declared that Reform Judaism and Zionism were incompatible: “Reform Judaism is
spiritual, Zionism is political. The outlook of Reform Judaism is the world. 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. Attending this meeting were six former presidents of the Central
Conference of American Rabbis, the president of Hebrew Union College and a former
president of B’nai B’rith.
Prominent laypersons joining the Council included Rear Admiral Louis Strauss,
Marcus C. Sloss, Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, former
congresswoman Florence P. Kahn, Herbert and Stanley Marcus of the Nieman-Marcus
Co., James D. Zellerbach, president of the Crown Zellerbach Corp., Sidney
Weinberg, senior partner of Goldman Sachs and Monroe E. Deutsch, Provost of the
University of California. It was Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New
York Times, who introduced the phrase “Americans of the Jewish faith” into the
Council’s statement of principles. The first president of the Council 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.
Continuity Of Jewish Opposition to Zionism
The continuity of American Jewish opposition to Zionism was reflected in the
membership in the Council of more than twenty of the original signers of the
petition Rep. Julius Klein presented to President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 in
opposition to the Balfour Declaration and to the creation of a Jewish state in
Palestine. Fourteen of the rabbis who had signed the petition also joined the
Council, including William Rosenau, David Philipson, William Fineshriber, Samuel
Goldenson, David Lefkowitz, Henry Cohen and Henry Barnston. Two lay endorsers of
the petition, Ralph W. Mack and Milton S. Binswanger, became ACJ Vice Presidents.
Many non-Jewish leaders, academics and journalists found the Council’s arguments
compelling, and worked closely with the organization. Among these were Barnard
College President Virginia Gildersleeve, British historian Arnold Toynbee,
journalist Dorothy Thompson, an early opponent of Hitler’s rise to power in
Germany, the Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, author Freda Utley and socialist leader
Norman Thomas. Thomas praised the Council as early as 1949 in a syndicated column
on the Arab refugee crisis and spoke frequently at Council functions.
The Council was incorporated in December 1942 and Rabbi Elmer Berger was named
executive director. Judah Magnes, chancellor of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, wrote a letter endorsing the Council’s 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.”
“We Have Belonged to Every Nation”
In 1943, Elmer Berger participated in a public debate in Richmond, Virginia with
Maurice Samuel, who had published an article attacking the Council at its
formation. Berger stated the fundamental position he would champion throughout
his life: “I oppose Zionism because I deny that Jews are a nation. We were a
nation for perhaps 200 years in a history of four thousand years. Before that we
were a group of Semitic tribes whose only tenuous bond of unity was a national
deity―a religious unity. After Solomon, we were never better than two nations,
frequently at war with one another, disappearing at different times, leaving
discernibly different cultures and even religions recorded in the Biblical
record. Certainly, since the Dispersion, we have not been a nation. We have
belonged to every nation in the world. We have mixed our blood with all peoples.
Jewish nationalism is a fabrication woven from the thinnest kinds of threads and
strengthened only in those eras of human history in which reaction has been
dominant and anti-Semitism in full cry.”
In his book “The Jewish Dilemma: The Case Against Zionist Nationalism” (1946),
Berger argued that the Western world in general and Jews in particular were
confused about the status of Jews. On the one hand, Jews and others condemned the
Nazi ideas on race; on the other, some Jews were claiming to be a separate people
or race. “Isn’t it a curious thing,” he wrote, “and tragically ironic that
Zionists and extreme anti-Semites agree on the same solution―isolate the Jews in
a country of their own.”
Expanding on themes of emancipation and integration, Berger observed that, “Where
men are free, Jews live in security, and where they are not free, Jews and others
know no freedom.” To him, the German experience did not prove the failure of his
ideas about the nature of emancipation. On the contrary, it actually proved his
thesis. In Germany, according to Berger, emancipation did not fail―it was never
real. What failed in Germany was democracy, and that affected Jews just as it had
affected all other Germans.
President Truman Meets with Lessing Rosenwald
On Dec. 4, 1945, hours after the first meeting with Zionist leader Chaim
Weizmann, President Harry S. Truman received Lessing Rosenwald in the Oval
Office. He called for the admission of both Jewish and non-Jewish displaced
persons to Palestine, and urged that, “Palestine shall not be a Muslim, Christian
or Jewish state but a country in which people of all faiths can play their full
and equal part,” and that, “the U.S. take the lead in coordinating with the U.N.
a cooperative policy of many nations in absorbing Jewish refugees.”
Rosenwald testified before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Jan. 10,
1946 and urged that large numbers of Jews be admitted into Palestine on the
condition that “the claim that Jews possess unlimited national rights to the
land, and that the country shall take the form of a racial or theocratic state,
were denounced once and for all.”
From 1943 to 1948, the Council conducted a 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.”
“Spurious Nationhood Imposed Upon Jews”
At this same 1945 conference, Rabbi Berger noted that the program of Jewish
nationalism had never expressed the real aspirations of Jews in America or
elsewhere. “Spurious nationhood,” he argued, “had been imposed upon Jews by
reactionary societies in the Middle Ages and this could not provide a solution to
reactionary forces in the modern world.” He maintained that “Jewish nationalists
wanted to maintain a medieval type of control over a so-called worldwide Jewish
people and to prevent emancipation of individual Jews.” This process, in his
view, reached alarming proportions in 1897 at the first Zionist Congress, where
197 men “arrogated to themselves the title ‘the Jewish nation.’ Proceeding to
create a worldwide political movement, they proclaimed that the medieval
collectivism of the ‘Jewish people’ wanted to realize its political destiny ‘by
creating a sovereign state in Palestine.’”
Berger pointed to the fact that Jewish emancipation had frequently been attacked
during the preceding century and a half by the “official Jews” who controlled the
community while it was imprisoned behind ghetto walls. With the collapse of the
ghetto, the leaders of the Jewish community were weakened. Threatened by the
prospect of integration and emancipation, they condemned it as “assimilation” and
did their best to impede it.
The connection between Zionism and the nationalism of Nazi Germany had been made
in 1938 when 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.” Another renowned German Jew, the philosopher Martin Buber, spoke out in
1942 against “the aim of the minority to ‘conquer’ territory by means of
international maneuvers.” In the midst of hostilities that broke out after Israel
unilaterally declared independence, Buber cited with despair, “This sort of
‘Zionism’ blasphemes the name of Zion; it is nothing more than one of the crude
forms of nationalism.”
Zionism’s Challenge to American Jews
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. Rabbi Berger published an essay that outlined “the challenge to
all Americans who are Jews by religion presented by Zionist plans to foster an
‘Israel-centered’ Jewish life in the U.S.”. He wrote: “The creation of a
sovereign state embodying the principles of Zionism, far from relieving American
Jews of the urgency of making that choice, makes it more compelling.”
Early in 1953, Berger and Rosenwald met in the White House with President Dwight
D. Eisenhower. The president accepted their memorandum, which discussed the
“confusion of Judaism with the nationalism of Israel,” such as Israel’s “Law of
Return,” enacted in 1951, which could be interpreted as granting de facto Israeli
citizenship to all the world’s Jews. The new Secretary of State, John Foster
Dulles, took the memorandum with him on his first trip to the Middle East and
echoed many of its points in a radio address at the end of his trip. Dulles urged
that Israel become part of the Near East community and cease to look upon itself
as alien to that community.
Zionists obstructed refugee assistance for Jews in countries other than Palestine
in the interests of its grand design to nationalize Palestine for all Jews.
Indeed, as early as 1938, David Ben-Gurion had proclaimed his readiness to
abandon thousands of Jewish children in exchange for a Jewish state: “If I knew
that it was possible to save all the Jewish children of Germany by their transfer
to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz Israel I would
choose the latter―because we are faced not only with the accounting of these
children but also with the historic accounting of the Jewish people.”
Address By FDR Aide Morris Ernst
One specific example was offered in 1950 by the distinguished American liberal
and fighter for civil liberties Morris Ernst. He was a close friend and adviser
to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was an early leader of the American Civil
Liberties Union. In an address to the annual conference of the American Council
for Judaism in Cincinnati on April 22, 1950, Ernst said: “Roosevelt had an idea
that what we ought to do with the people pushed around in Europe was to set up
what he called a World Budget and let all the free nations of the world agree as
to how many people they would take in as immigrants, irrespective of race, creed,
color or political belief. The president told me that he was sure that he could
get so many into Canada, so many into Australia, so many in each South American
country―and then he said, ‘You know we in the U.S. will be the last to open our
doors, because we are going back on our historic position of political asylum.’
This was before the labor unions had taken their shift on the Immigration Bill.
This was before the manufacturers had gotten a little wisdom on the subject.”
Ernst went to England in the midst of the blitz, and they agreed to take 150,000
refugees from the Nazis. He reported that, Roosevelt said, ‘We can’t put it over
because the dominant vocal Jewish leadership of America won’t stand for it.’ And
I said, ‘It’s impossible, why?’ He said, ‘Well, they’re right from their point of
view. The Zionist movement knows that Palestine is, and will be for some time, a
remittance society. They know that they can raise vast sums for Palestine by
saying to donors, ‘there is no other place this poor Jew can go.’ But, said
Roosevelt, ‘if there’s a world political asylum for all people, irrespective of
race, creed or color, they can’t raise their money. Because the people who don’t
want to give the money will have an excuse and say, ‘What do you mean there’s no
place they can go but Palestine? They are the preferred wards of the world.’”
Ernst told the audience, “I could hardly believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.
That a bit of chauvinism and nationalism among a few leaders of the Jewish
organizations of America could defeat an overall haven for the oppressed of
Europe. I said, ‘Let me test it out.’ I went to friends of mine, without
mentioning the British people I had spoken to, without mentioning Roosevelt―I
laid down this grand dream, this great plan―of the world joining together to give
relief to the people pushed around by Hitler. I assure you that I was thrown out
of parlors of friends of mine. And they said very frankly, and they were right
from their point of view, ‘Morris, this is treason―you’re undermining the Zionist
movement.’ I’d say, ‘Yes, maybe I am. But I’m much more interested in a haven for
half a million or a million people―oppressed throughout the world.’”
Religious Schools to Advance Judaism Free of Nationalism
The Council engaged in a variety of activities to promote its vision of Judaism
free of nationalism. It ran religious schools, published children’s textbooks and
established a philanthropic foundation. Among the books it published were Samuel
Baron’s “Children’s Devotions,”. Abraham Cronbach’s “Judaism for Today,” and “Not
By Power,” by Allan Tarshish, who was rabbi of the first Reform congregation in
Charleston, South Carolina. Rabbi David Goldberg, who served as the first Jewish
chaplain in the U.S. Navy during World War 1, was the Council’s research
director. He wrote three books, among them “Meet The Prophets.” For a number of
years, the Council published a children’s magazine called “Growing Up.” The
curriculum was designed by Leonard R. Sussman, who served for many years as the
Council’s Executive director and later distinguished himself as the executive
director of Freedom House.
In “Meet The Prophets,” Rabbi Goldberg writes: “It was the Prophets who possessed
the courage and the conscience to stress the universal, ethical values that have
become Judaism’s contribution to the world…Despite the exclusiveness of the
Covenant with Yahweh, we can see in it the first glimmer of the great religion
that was to be known as Judaism. More and more, this relationship came to differ
from the usual tribal god covenants. For one thing, Yahweh, as Moses introduced
Him, was an invisible spirit that liberates people from the shackles of slavery:
and who orders one to honor his parents, not to murder or cheat or steal or
lie―and so with the other of the Ten Commandments. Yahweh, then, is a moral God
who demands of his follower's moral behavior…. In the course of time, as the
people’s understanding of Yahweh increased, the scope of the covenant also
increased and was to be extended to other people.”
The earliest pre -literary prophets, Goldberg points out, believed that Yahweh
was the God of Israel and Judah only, “But to the Literary Prophets, He was the
God of all humanity―indeed, of all creation…They have become not only the
Prophets of Judaism but also the Prophets of Christianity and Islam, the two
great daughter-religions of Judaism.” The Prophet Amos made clear that Yahweh is
the God of all people. In Amos 9:7 we read, “Are you not like the Ethiopians to
Me, O Children of Israel?” Says the Lord. “Did I not bring up Israel from Egypt,
as I did the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?”
The Common Possession of Humanity
Amos and the other Prophets, Goldberg shows, “laid the foundation of a Judaism
that no longer was to remain the cult of a mere clan or tribe or even a nation,
but which was to become the common possession of all civilized humanity…He is the
God of all countries ―He addresses his prophecies to other people who are not of
Israel or Judah. They are directed to the people of Damascus in Syria, to the
people of Gaza in Philistia, of Tyre in Phoenicia. He tells his countrymen that
they shouldn’t expect to be favored by God above all other people because all
people are alike in the eye of God.”
It is this Prophetic vision of a universal Judaism which the American Council for
Judaism has advanced. It understood that the great contribution of Jews and
Judaism to the world is something far different from the narrow goals sought by
those who would set Jews apart, either in a state of their own or in narrow
religious ghettos of the spirit, which would make of Jews what Herzl called a
“normal” people. To become “normal” is, of course, to abandon the unique Jewish
role set forth by the Prophets and by the architects of Reform Judaism.
In his book “The Gifts of The Jews,” Thomas Cahill provides this assessment of
the Jewish contribution: “Because of their unique belief―monotheism―the Jews were
able to give us the Great Whole, a unified universe that makes sense and that,
because of its evident superiority as a worldview, completely overwhelms the
warring and contradictory phenomenon of polytheism. They gave us the Conscience
of the West, and 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 God who cares about each of his creatures, especially
the human beings he created ‘in his own image,’ and that he insists we do the
same. Even the gradual universalization of Jewish ideas, hinted at in the story
of Ruth…was foreseen by Joel, the late prophet who probably rose after the return
from Babylon: ‘And it shall come to pass afterward that I shall pour out my
spirit on all humanity. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old people
shall dream dreams, and your young people see visions. Even on slaves, men and
women, shall I pour out my spirit.’”
“We Dream Jewish Dreams”
Cahill declares that “The Jews 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, in fact——adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time,
history, future, progress, spirit, faith, hope and justice―are gifts of the
Jews.”
In his biography of Rabbi Elmer Berger, “Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and
American Jewish Anti-Zionism,” Jack Ross shows how Berger worked closely with
U.S. Government officials to oppose any idea that Israel could speak in the name
of the “Jewish people,” rather than its own citizens. He also worked with, among
others, Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-AR), chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, to have Zionist groups register as foreign agents of Israel.
He wrote and spoke frequently about the dispossession and mistreatment of
Palestine’s indigenous population and about the plight of Palestinian refugees.
Ross provides this assessment of the Classical Reform Judaism in which Berger
believed: “It involved the centrality of the biblical prophets. That is that the
essence of Judaism is not the ‘national narrative that ostensibly constitutes the
Old Testament but rather in the example of those, namely the prophets, who spoke
out against the Kings and priests who corrupted the nation and the people. It has
been said by many that there is no greater power in all of human literature than
the warning of the Prophet Samuel against the Israelites’ desire for a king.
Implicit in all of this is the overarching premise that the downfall of Biblical
Israel was its eagerness to define itself as a temporal kingdom, in other words a
state with all its trappings of power.”
Majority of Jewish Americans Share Council’s Views
In today’s America, in Ross’s view, the majority of Jewish Americans really share
the philosophy enunciated by the Council: “…the majority of American Jews today
would be completely baffled by the suggestion that they were anything but
completely emancipated and integrated Americans whose Judaism is primarily if not
solely a matter of confession…Berger…must be given credit for recognizing the
underlying essential sociological truth of American Jewish life―that regardless
of the theological and even sociological merits of the question of Jewish
peoplehood, the concept could not withstand the reality of U.S. society.”
Largely in response to the implications of the case of Adolf Eichmann in 1960, in
which Israel justified its capture of Eichmann in Argentina in behalf of “the
Jewish people,” the Council felt it was necessary to seek a formal declaration
from the U.S. government as to whether or not it accepted the claims made by
Israel and for the U.S. to declare whether or not it recognized the existence of
“the Jewish people” as a matter of international law. The Council enlisted
Professor William Thomas Mallison, Jr., who held chairs at both George Washington
University and the Naval War College, to review the question.
In 1964, Mallison completed his brief that would be known as “The Jewish People
Study,” and would be published in the George Washington University Law Review. A
copy was sent to Assistant Secretary of State Philips Talbot. On April 20, 1964,
Talbot formally replied. He wrote: “The Department of State recognizes the State
of Israel as a sovereign state and citizenship in the state of Israel. It
recognizes no other sovereignty or citizenship in connection therewith. It does
not recognize a legal-political relationship based upon the religious
identification of American citizens. It does not in any way discriminate among
American citizens upon the basis of their religion. Accordingly, it should be
clear that the Department of State does not regard the ‘Jewish people’ concept as
a concept of international law.”
State Department Rejects Legal Concept of Jewish “Nationhood”
Israel had indeed claimed the force of law in the name of the “Jewish people in
the Eichmann case, and with the Talbot letter the State Department formally
rejected the premise of a legal Jewish “nationhood” which underlined both the
Balfour Declaration and the 1947 partition.
Jewish criticism of Zionism throughout the world continued long after Israel’s
creation. When Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion called for “complete
solidarity with the State of Israel” on the part of all Jews, Denmark’s chief
rabbi, Marcus Melchior, responded: “We Danish Jews do not usually air our
patriotism. Why on earth should we shout ‘hurrah’ more loudly than all the other
Danes? But we take an opportunity like this to state that no one, however big he
may be or from wherever he may come, has the right or is able to change even one
jot of what for 150 years has been the status of Danish Jews under which there
has been established a relationship in Denmark of which we are all just as happy
on the Christian side as on the Jewish side. If Premier Ben-Gurion really claimed
that in order to be a Jew every minute of one’s life, one has to live in Israel,
then according to my view two questions arise. The first is whether to be a Jew
every minute is of imperative necessity and whether Jewishness and being a
general human being did not equate each other so completely that one at the same
time could be Jewish and a human being in other places than in the few square
kilometers which form the territory of Israel.”
In his history of the early years of the American Council for Judaism, “Jews
Against Zionism” (Temple University Press), Professor Thomas Kolsky pointed to
the fact that the Council was maintaining the tradition of Reform Judaism’s
founders. The warnings which the Council expressed during its early years, he
concluded, have been prophetic: “…many of its predictions about the establishment
of a Jewish state did come true. As the ACJ had foreseen, the birth of the state
created numerous problems―problems the Zionists had minimized. For example,
Israel became highly dependent on support from American Jews. Moreover, the
creation of the state directly contributed to undermining Jewish communities in
Arab countries and to precipitating protracted conflict between Israel and the
Arabs. Indeed, as the Council had often warned, and contrary to Zionist
expectations, Israel did not become a normal state. Nor did it become a light to
the nations. Ironically, created presumably to free Jews from anti-Semitism and
ghetto-like existence as well as provide them with abiding peace, Israel became,
in effect, a garrison state, a nation resembling a large territorial ghetto
besieged by hostile neighbors…The ominous predictions of the ACJ are still
haunting the Zionists.”
“Everything they (the ACJ) prophesied…has come to pass.”
Jonathan Sarna, 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 that Zionism is no
panacea.”
Samuel Freedman devoted his “On Religion” column in The New York Times (June 26,
2010) to the Council. He pointed out that, “…the intense criticism of Israel now
growing among a number of American Jews has made the group look significant, even
prophetic…The arguments that the Council has levied against Zionism and Israel
have shot back into prominence…The rejection of Zionism …goes back to the Torah
itself. Until Theodor Herzl created the modern Zionist movement…the Biblical
injunction to return to Israel was widely understood as a theological construct
rather than a pragmatic instruction…The Reform movement maintained that Judaism
is a religion, not a nationality.”
Since that was written, it has become increasingly clear that Israel has turned
its back on traditional Jewish moral and ethical values. It has denied equal
rights to Palestinians who are citizens of Israel and has provided no rights to
Palestinians in the illegally occupied territories. While Jewish Americans
believe in religious freedom and separation of church and state, Israel is a
theocracy with a state-supported ultra-Orthodox religious establishment. Non-
Orthodox rabbis cannot perform weddings, conduct funerals or have their
conversions recognized. Israel has no civil marriage. For a Jewish Israeli to
marry someone who is not Jewish, it is necessary to leave the country to do so.
Many Israelis, such as the human rights group B’tselem, have characterized
Israel’s system as one of “apartheid,” as have Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International. Israel’s values and those of the overwhelming majority of American
Jews have less and less in common with each passing year.
“age of…unquestioning…support for Israel is over”
In his book “Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel,”
Professor Dov Waxman of Northeastern University reports that, “A historic change
has been taking place in the American Jewish relationship with Israel. The age of
unquestioning and unstinting support for Israel is over. The pro-Israel consensus
that once united American Jews is eroding, and Israel is fast becoming a source
of division rather than unity for American Jewry…The current debate echoes
earlier debates about Zionism that occurred before 1948. Then, as now, there were
fierce disagreements among American Jews and the American Jewish establishment...
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.”
The vast majority of Jewish Americans, Waxman writes, 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.”
Ignoring the history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, in an effort to silence
criticism of Israel, challenges to Zionism have been equated to anti-Semitism. On
May 1, 2022, in a recorded speech at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) leadership
summit, ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt declared that “anti-Zionism is
anti-Semitism.” He equated groups calling for equal rights for Palestinians in
Israel with white nationalist extremists. Such a statement is, of course,
completely ahistorical.
Rabbi Brant Rosen notes that his Congregation Tzedek Chicago “recently amended
its core values statement to say that we are ‘anti-Zionist,’ openly acknowledging
that the creation of an ethnic Jewish nation in historic Palestine resulted in an
injustice against the Palestinian people. It is becoming increasingly difficult
to deny the fundamental injustice at the core of Zionism.”
Maintaining Its Vision For 80 Years
For 80 years, the American Council for Judaism has never abandoned its vision of
a universal faith of moral and ethical values for men and women of every race and
nation which the Prophets preached and in which generations of Jews believed. The
Council’s early leaders recognized how narrow nationalism would corrupt the
humane Jewish tradition. For the past 80 years, the Council has kept that
tradition alive. That more and more men and women, particularly in the younger
generation, are returning to that faith at the present time is a vindication of
their vision. It seems, indeed, to have been truly prophetic. *
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