Jack Ross, a frequent guest blogger on this site, is a 23-year-old Jew living in Brooklyn who shares my view that Jews need to get past religious nationalism. He is preparing a biography of the late anti-Zionist rabbi Elmer Berger and sent me the following note this a.m., on my post that neoconservatism has deeply infiltrated Jewish life:
I agree, it will be much more difficult than Levy at Huffington Post thinks to dislodge the cancer of neo-conservatism from American Jewish
life. But what is more likely in my view than a long twilight struggle
is that events, both at home and abroad, will force a disastrous
upheaval for the Jews.
I must also take issue with your characterization of the “dovish” American Jewish community. Not for nothing did Phil Ochs [Weiss’s distant cousin] write the lines “I’ve memorized Lerner and Golden/I feel like I’m
almost a Jew/But when it comes to times like Korea/There’s no one more
red, white, and blue” – so love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.”
It was nothing less than a nationalist fervor that swept over the Jews of America with World War II, the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel. At least two of the leaders of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, Lessing Rosenwald [of Sears, Roebuck] and Irving Reichert, had been prominent America Firsters. The latter’s
ignominious removal from his pulpit probably had as much as anything to
do with his daring to say in addressing a CCAR meeting in 1946 [the Central Conference of American Rabbis, body of the Reform movement] that we
should remember the parable of God upbraiding the Israelites for rejoicing at the drowning of the Egyptians in forming postwar policy toward Germany.
As for more recent history, yes there were Jewish liberal hypocrites against Vietnam and even Iraq,
but neo-conservatism was easily the more important phenomenon in Jewish
life coming out of Vietnam, and in the case of Iraq, well, trying to do
something about that is what this blog and both our endeavors are all
about.
I challenged Jack on a few points. Being against the Vietnam war was central to my political formation, more than Zionism or Jewish religion. Tons of Jews led that movement.
Hypocrisy may not have been the best or most exact word, but I’m referring to double standards on foreign policy not relating to Israel
Then I asked him about the America Firsters. Rosenwald and Berger weren’t pro-Nazi.
“Please! The significance being that they were a more genuine
progressive conscience, that a larger liberal outlook (old right
according to some, Bill Kauffman calls it “retroprogressive”) animated their opposition to Zionism
and its impact on American Jewish life. This, in opposition to the
raging nationalist fervor which stemmed in part from the craven New Deal liberalism of Stephen Wise et al.”
Not sure there. I’m a New Deal liberal. Then I asked Ross about his apocalyptic opening statment:
“I’m not talking about pogroms or anything like that (but if we attack Iran,
all bets are off). Wasn’t it your father who you say has always said
when the Jews lose their status in America it will be not with a bang
but with a whimper? [Yes] Starting with that premise, what I meant was a
very sudden turmoil overtaking the politics of the community, similar
too, and very possibly greater than, that which followed the great
disappointment of Shabtai Tzvi.”
Completely agree there. The Shabtai Tzvi was a messianic movement in Jewish life in the 1600s led by a false and mystical prophet who ended up converting to Islam. Quite a shock to the Jewish system.
