The Jewish Story: The Evolution of American Zionism, part II

"Let no American imagine," says Justice Louis D. Brandeis, "that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they're inconsistent." Now, I've got my inconsistencies just like everybody else, but I like to believe my loyalties lie in the highest of places cuz I'm Marc B. Shapiro and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 2, The Evolution of American Zionism, Part 2, The Conflicts That Shaped American Zionism. So, last episode we talked about America as the environment of formation for Zionism. Now, we need to take on another piece of the evolutionary process and that's competition. You know, if you ask most people about evolution, they'll tell you that it's all about the survival of the fittest. But as I've said many times, Darwin never said any such thing. That was Herbert Spencer, father of what's called social Darwinism. Darwin's phrase was more like survival of that which is most fit. And as we're going to see in today's episode, the particular nature of American and Zionism is perfectly fit to the environment of formation in which it finds itself. And like I said, we're going to look at a couple of conflicts that really contribute to that. But before we do, I want to remind you of a lesson that's come up in previous seasons a couple of times. And that's that there are two models, basic models of how we relate to our past and they play a very important role in how of course we're going to understand the present and the future. The first is the neoclassical, the idea that the ideal lies somewhere in the past. Be it the Greco-Roman world that lies at the base of the Renaissance or even in our own tradition, the idea of the Davidic kingdom, the restoration of the temple. An idealized version of the past is actually where things were best. And the implication of such a thing is that the forms which are created by our journey through history are at best accidental. And at worst, they're falsehoods that cover up our true self. And we have to shed those aspects in order to get back to the core of who we really are, meaning who we were, but who we are. And you can see how this plays a very important role in the Zionist notion of Shlilat Ha'Galut, the negation of exile. It's not for nothing that the Zionists and the early leadership of the state of Israel were fond of that phrase, Min Ha'Tanakh El Ha'Palmach, from the Hebrew Bible to the striking arm of the Israeli army, and skip the 2,500 years that lie in between those accidents of exile, which are really just false images covering over our real Israelite self. And of course, the question for us is where does real Zionism, or in fact, the real Jew reside? It's not just a question of time, it's also a question of locality. Because if you think of Judaism as a constant seed being planted, and the Jewish people, you could look at the Torah as like the DNA or the source code, planted in Poland, up spring the Jews. Planted in North Africa, up spring the Jews. We've spoken about it before. But the assertion of Zionism is that only the tree which grows out of that seed when it's planted in Israel is the true Jew. So, you can see that that's not just a neoclassical longing for a past time, it's a belief that there's only one place in which the Jews can really be the Jews. That's one side of the argument. The other side of the argument that we've discussed, that's not the neoclassical, is the cultural evolutionary. This is the idea that every environment of formation that we encounter through history actually allows for something genuine to emerge from within us that would otherwise never have found expression. Meaning that forms that we've taken in exile, the habits we've learned, the things that we've taught, the people we've become, aren't accidents, and they're certainly not falsehoods which cover over our true nature. They are elements of our true self which could only find their expression through the environment of formation in the various stops along the way of exile. An example would be poetry. As we said before, I mean poetry exists in the Bible. Of course, the the the prophets are really the poets of ancient Israel. But when you look at the encounter between Jewish culture and Arabic culture, and you see the flowering of the poetry of the early Middle Ages, you could say that we were just aping the ways of another culture, or you could say that that was an environment of formation that set free the poetic soul within Am Yisrael. And from this perspective of cultural evolution, we have to ask the question of is American Zionism real Zionism? Right? Because American Zionism isn't arguing that Israel isn't the real Zion, but it fundamentally challenges that posture of Shlilat HaGalut, of the negation of exile, which underlies classic Zionism. Because American Zionism is premised on a model of integration of all the experiences of the past into present identity. And when it comes to cultural evolution, that integration of the past into present identity is what allows us to come to a fullness of the future. Right? American Zionism doesn't see itself as an accident or second best, as we'll see in the conflicts in the coming episodes. And that's what's going to set up the real issue that we're laying out today, one that's going to follow us through the whole coming season. We're going to see today the emergence of a messy love triangle between American Jewry, or really American Zionism, between the World Zionist Movement, and the State of Israel. And you know, if I have to look back in season two, I'd have to give the credit to Hillel Kook, that great soldier and fighter who attempted to first awaken American Jewry to need to fight for independence in the land of Israel. And then, when the Holocaust began to unfold, was the most active voice amongst American and really world Jewry in attempting to save his brothers and sisters. He saw it first. But even as he was rallying to save European Jewry on one hand, and lead the Jews of the land of Israel on the other toward independence, he foresaw the imminent conflict between the Jewish American identity and the identity of the Hebrew nation. Here, listen to these words from his manifesto of the Hebrew nation, written in 1944. The Jews today who live in the European hell, together with the Jews of the land of Israel, constitute the Hebrew nation. That's what we call today Israel. There isn't another nation to which they owe their allegiance, but the Hebrew nation. We must state it clearly, the Jews in the United States do not belong to the Hebrew nation. These Jews are Americans of Hebrew descent. Now, he solved the problem by making a hard division. The Jews of America are Jews, not Israelis. Right? And the Jews of Israel are Israelis. But does that mean that they're not Jews? Right? There's a deep question here, and a lot of it actually comes down to geography. American Zionism was never premised on the mass immigration. They didn't see their staying home in America, so to speak, as some form of armchair Zionism, right? That's that old joke that Zionism is when one Jew asked another Jew for money to send a third Jew to Israel. That's not what was happening in America. The American Jewish experience of acceptance offered something fundamentally different to the concept of Zionism than European Jewry's experience of rejection. And we saw that that America was a unique environment of formation for Zionism. So, we have that now. And let's take a look at two American Zionist leaders and how their competition with European and Israeli Zionists will further shape the evolution of American Zionism. The founding personality of American Zionism is unquestionably Louis Brandeis. He was a child of the second wave of Jewish immigration. Those were the German Jews that came over in the early 19th century. Born to Bohemian immigrant parents in 1856. and by 1876 he'd already graduated Harvard Law School. You know, the legend says that he had the highest grade point average ever in the history of the school. And Brandeis stayed on in Boston where he founded a law firm. In fact, he didn't just found a law firm, he became a leading legal voice of the entire progressive era. His public profile was so high in the battles that he fought that he eventually became known as the people's lawyer. And until he was well into his 50s, Brandeis was completely alienated not only from Zionism but from most forms of Jewish life. He didn't live near other Jews. He didn't belong to any synagogue. He gave only symbolic gifts to Jewish charities and his friends were almost entirely non-Jews. There are many people later who would claim to have recruited Brandeis to the Zionist cause or at least to be able to explain how he got there. But he himself attributed his interest in Zionism to the role he played in mediating the great New York garment workers strike of 1910. The strike is its own classic story by the way. Jewish labor, the immigrant struggle. But for our purposes, what matters is the role that Brandeis played brought him in contact for the first time with the Eastern European Jewish masses of the third wave. Now here were a type of Jews he'd never encountered. And he was deeply moved. He labeled them as quote a true democratic feeling and a deep appreciation of the elements of social justice. And there was nothing more important in his eyes to American character than those two things, the democratic feeling and social justice. So, driven by that excitement over the potential of this new type of Jew, Brandeis looked around for what to do and what he found was the Zionist Organization of America which he joined in 1912 and almost overnight his prestige transformed the movement. It It just his prestige. Brandeis was a new type of leader, charismatic, wealthy, connected, and respected by all levels of society. His status brought a whole new scale of operations to American Zionism. And his timing couldn't have been better. The second generation of Eastern European immigrants were now well-established enough to start to organize. And their sense of ethnic solidarity, if not outright nationalism, brought them to the Zionist movement when they looked around for where to go. And together, Brandeis's leadership and their numbers made American Zionism into a force within the world Zionist movement as a whole. By 1915, only 3 years after he joined the ZOA, Brandeis was already Zionism's leading spokesman in America. And he was a close associate of Horace Kallen, who we spoke about last episode. In fact, he deeply shared Kallen's vision of Zionism as an expression of cultural pluralism. Right, Zionism and Americanism were one in the same in Brandeis's eyes. As he told the delegates to the 1915 ZOA convention, "By battling for the Zionist cause, the American ideal of democracy, of social justice, and of liberty will be given wider expression." Not only did Brandeis espouse this sort of cultural pluralist view of Zionism, but he was able to put to rest the deepest fear of many American Zionists, American Jews in general. Right, that fear that they'd be forced to choose between their loyalties. But Brandeis held up the belief that loyalty to America demands that each American Jew become a Zionist. "Only through the ennobling effects of its strivings can we develop the best that is within us and give to this country the full benefits of our great inheritance." That's the essence of Kallen's vision of cultural pluralism, that becoming a Zionist means finding your full voice as a Jew, and finding your full voice as a Jew means being able to contribute your most to the harmony which is America. In 1916, Louis Brandeis was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to be the first Jew to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. And what could be a greater affirmation of his vision that a good Zionist is a good American? Overnight, Justice Brandeis became the ultimate proof that dual loyalty was nothing more than a bugbear that haunted a shallow imagination of some American Jews. He was the essence of a Zionist and the best of Americans. So, his formal leadership of American Zionism extended between 1914 and 1921. This was a time, like I said, it wasn't just his ability. The suffering of Jews in Europe during World War I and in Palestine at the same time mobilized American Jewry while they were coming into a status social and economic that allowed them to actually marshal their resources. So, in good progressive fashion, Brandeis set about bringing order to the Zionist camp. You know, they say he installed a time clock in the offices as the first time, and it was a symbol of his belief in the almost sacred quality of organizational efficiency, child of the progressive era that he was. And he also helped the American movement raise an unprecedented amount of money, much of it from his own pocket, and that put American Zionism on track to becoming the next great source of funding for world Zionism. I could list all of his accomplishments. Brandeis played a critical behind-the-scenes role in winning American support of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. He helped author the official program of American Zionist movement, the Pittsburgh program of 1918, and he finally was elected honorary president of the World Zionist Organization in 1920. It was at a time when it looked like the center of Zionist activity might actually be moving away from Europe. Well, first of all, the continent was devastated by war. And now, with the story that we already told in season 2 with the rise of the British mandate, a Jewish home in the land of Israel had become a question of practical work and no longer one of political organization. But, this aspect of organizational efficiency and the track of American Jewry to become a major source of funding, together with Brandeis's charismatic and somewhat dogmatic personality, set him on the track for trouble. The real breakdown between European American Zionism came at the ZOA convention in Cleveland in 1921. And depending on which historian you ask, that was either when the followers of Louis Brandeis deserted the Zionist movement or when they were purged by the party of Chaim Weizmann. The fight had actually begun a bit more than a year before. It was triggered by the European proposal to create a central financial agency for the development of the Jewish home, the Keren Hayesod. Now that the mandate had been created and that the dream of a Jewish home had become actual public policy for the British Empire, the goal of the Zionist movement became to raise 25 million British pounds from world Jewry all over toward the development of the Yishuv, of the settlement of Jews in the land of Israel. Now, the idea was appealing, but the progressive administrator in Louis Brandeis was horrified by the charity orientation of the plan. And just, by the way, as the Europeans were disgusted by his cheap American focus on investment, looking to make a profit, apparently. And Brandeis also criticized what he saw to be a gross lack of professional qualification on the part of the suggested leadership for this Keren. It was a judgment that the European Zionists saw as heretical. It was a denigration of the national heroes of the Jewish people who'd been fighting in the wilderness for the Zionist dream for decades. Now, his criticism was part of a larger problem that the ZOA, the Zionist Organization of America, saw in the activities of the World Zionist Organization. In the eyes of the Americans, the only purpose of a world Zionist movement was the building of a national home. And they were concerned that the nearly $75,000 a month, which American Zionists were currently contributing to the WZO budget, was at best going to broader political and cultural activities. And at worst, supporting an administration of professional Zionists in London and Palestine that had become an end unto itself. But the finances weren't the issue, cuz the financial argument quickly devolved into a questioning of loyalties. The Europeans claimed that by opposing Keren Hayesod, the Americans were halting the progress of Jewish history. While Brandeis said flatly that any departure from efficiency is in a real sense treason to our cause. Those are fighting words, right? Nevertheless, there was no break between the ZOA and the WZO at the London conference where the Esod was established. The Keren came into being, and the American Zionists decided to wait and see what relationship would develop between it and the WZO Executive Committee. Meanwhile, Brandeis went about remaking the Zionist movement in America in his image. He streamlined its administration. He created a Palestine Development Committee and put at its head business professionals that he felt could direct American money towards true goal of efficient and effective investment. And furthermore, the contributions of American Zionism were to the WZO, the World Zionist Movement, were reduced, but not cut off. In hopes of maintaining crucial American support, in fact, the WZO actually began to restructure along the same American lines, but slowly and with very little success. Arguments around the Keren Hayesod, this universal appeal, and the independent nature of American Zionism simmered all year until finally Chaim Weizmann decided to cross the Atlantic himself in April of 1921 with the goal of setting up the Keren Hayesod in America. Once he set foot on American soil, the battle burst into flame once again. American Zionists began to line up, some on the side of Brandeis and some on the side of Weizmann and the administrative argument became political. Neither side was interested in compromise. I could go through all the details of the fights, the proposals, the rejection, but I'd rather look at the two foundational issues that I see that really divided the the visions of these camps well beyond the financial battle over the Keren or the political battle between the power of Brandeis and Weizmann. The first one is a question of sovereignty. In the eyes of the European Zionists, the World Zionist Organization, the WZO, was a legislative form of the entire Jewish people. It and only it represented the sovereignty of a people who didn't yet have a state. The Americans, on the other hand, fundamentally disagreed. To them, the purpose of the WZO was simply the building of a Jewish home in the land of Israel. And any other political work could now be dispensed with since the British mandate had come into being with the goal of creating a Jewish home. And furthermore, in the eyes of American Zionists, if there was anybody that could claim to express the sovereign voice of Jewry in America, it was rightly the American Jewish Congress that had been founded only a few years before in 1918. That was a democratic organization, a grass-root effort to actually wrest the leadership of American Jewry away from that generation of German Jews and their assimilationist stance, a story again unto itself. But let's just be clear about the argument. As far as Brandeis and his followers were concerned, even when a Jewish government would come into being in Israel, it would exercise sovereignty only over the Jews of that country. It would not represent the Jews of America or anywhere else. And therefore, the WZO was not the sovereign voice of world Jewry. Now, there's another piece aside from sovereignty. And that's the very nature of Zionism. European Zionism, as we've said many times, is based on this notion of shlilat hagolah. Life in exile is debased by definition. All the forms the Jews have taken through our in our long journey away from home and then back again are to be discarded upon arrival. The Jews have to be returned to Eretz Israel, to the land of Israel, in order first of all to escape anti-Semitism, and second of all to become that normal accepted member of the family of the nations which was at the heart of the Zionist dream. Now, they did, they being European Zionists, they did support a sort of diaspora nationalism because they wanted the Jews of Poland, Russia, and of course America to see themselves as a national minority in exile, not as citizens of the land in which they lived. And that was a gateway which was meant to serve the rebirth of the Jewish nation as one organic whole in its land. Well, American Zionists saw things very differently. First of all, despite the surge in political anti-Semitism that happened in the '30s and '40s, most American Jews, to this very day, don't define themselves through the experience of hatred and rejection by the world around them. That's one. Number two, American Jewry never saw itself as subject to Herzl, Nordau, and Ber Borochov, all those classic Zionist thinkers, their vision of this inexorable law of Jewish destiny, which was to return to the land of Israel and a denial of Jewish life anywhere outside it. Cultural pluralism that lies at the heart of American Zionism sees America as something other than exile. It has a vision that it's possible to be nationally whole within the harmony of the American ethnic commonwealth. It was probably best said by Judge Julian Mack, a Brandeis supporter, at that Cleveland convention. He said, "The Jews scattered throughout the world are a living nationality in the sense of people with a common inheritance, a common tradition, and for large part a common religion. In Palestine, the Jews would form a political nation, but the thought of a political status of the Jews of the world was an impossible conception." In plain language, American Zionism saw itself as working for the rebirth in the land of Israel not of the Jewish nation, but of a Jewish nation. Now, you can see that this is a very big gap. And once the extent of that rift was seen, the Europeans felt that there was no logic in including within the WZO, the World Zionist Organization, people who denied the unity of the Jewish people and denied therefore the right of the WZO to exercise sovereignty on their behalf. Weizmann put it this way, "I have and I formulate here a definite accusation, a definite charge, before the bar of history. American Zionist leadership did not understand the moment. They failed to grasp it. Here began the degradation of our movement. The American Zionist leaders cut the Zionist program to fit their circumstances. And the rest is history." You might think that Brandeis would have the home court advantage in Cleveland, but nevertheless, don't forget the rank and file of American Zionism, as I said, was composed of the first and second generation immigrants from Eastern Europe, and they came from Weizmann's world. In the end, Keren Hayesod succeeded in establishing the American arm known as United Israel Appeal. It's around even today. Chaim Weizmann went on to become the elder statesman of the Zionist movement, and eventually Israel's first president. While Louis Brandeis, along with the majority of his loyalists, resigned from the Zionist Organization of America following that Cleveland conference. It was a major break. And it exposed a deep ideological rift besides the financial and political fight. Nevertheless, the collective trauma of the Shoah, and the excitement around the birth of the state of Israel succeeded in papering over the questions of sovereignty and definitions of Zionism that lay between them. And in fact, the mission of establishing the state is going to push ideological Zionism into the background altogether. The definition on the near horizon of our story is Zionism as active support for the state of Israel, full stop, regardless of where you live or how you conceive Jewish identity. And that will succeed in uniting American Jewry in an unprecedented fashion, which is good for the state of Israel cuz it will be their financial and political backing that play a crucial role in the development of the state in the coming decades. But, if you've been paying attention, then you know that the questions of what it means to be a Jew, an American, a Zionist, or an Israeli don't go away. The difficulties of negotiating between those elements of identity are actually the bread and butter of today's Jewish story. If Louis Brandeis was the founding father of American Zionism, then Abba Hillel Silver was its first successful general. Abba Hillel Silver was born in 1893, fourth of six children to Mosha and Dina Silver, immigrants from Lithuania to the Lower East Side of New York City. And a true child of the third immigrant wave, at age nine, if you'd found Abba Hillel running around, you'd seen him speaking Yiddish and sporting payot side curls. And you might have been quite surprised to know that only 15 years later, he would be hired as the rabbi of the leading reform of Cleveland, known simply as The Temple. Yes, when I grew up, it was still The Temple or occasionally Silver's Temple. And I can imagine that when Silver moved from New York ghetto to begin his studies at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati at age 19, the culture shock was extreme. The reform movement at that time was still completely a product of the German Jews of the second wave. And as we know, they tended to look down at the obviously ethnic nature of Eastern European Jewry in general. These were the cultural assimilationists. But nevertheless, despite that formative stamp of a cultural assimilation and a desire to be more American than anything else, Abba Hillel's journey toward the leadership of the American Zionist movement was direct. It began a little after he graduated and he took a sabbatical from his congregation in 1933 to Europe. Silver arrived in Berlin in January of 1933. And what he found was a city on the edge of chaos. Nazi marches, communist counter-marches, street battles, violence was in the air. And he was there the month that Hitler was appointed as Reich Chancellor. And Abba Hillel immediately reached the conclusion that the Nazis' anti-Jewish legislation was a threat to the very foundation of Jewish existence within Germany. Returning to Cleveland, Abba Hillel Silver did not wait long to take action. And in his first leadership role, he helped to start a movement for an economic boycott of Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, despite this vision that the Germans the Nazis, I should say, were so dangerous, Silver at this point still insisted that if the Jews left Germany, they would be surrendering to the anti-Semitic view that the Jews had no right to live in Europe. Like I said, he wasn't a Zionist per se at this point. He still imbibed that German reform notion that to be a Jew was to be a good American or in this case to be a good German. However, by 1941, cables began to arrive in Europe that said that the mass murder of Jews were underway. And when he looked around, Abba Hillel Silver an anti-Semitic wave sweeping through the United States itself. The solution therefore in his eyes became Zionism. And in his Sunday sermons, he began to declare that if the Jews of America made do with a local struggle against anti-Semitism and didn't open up a battle on the real enemy of Nazism, then what lay in wait for them was the same terror destroying Europe. And the only solution to their helplessness and fear was the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Now this, coming from a leader of one of the largest reform congregations in America, was simply a bombshell. He made it even worse when in 1942, as the annihilation of almost 2 million Jews had become an established fact at least amongst the Jews of America, Silver said in one speech that the horrific suffering and death of the Jewish victims must become the drum on which the Zionist struggle would beat in order to promote the establishment of a state. It's an uncomfortable question today, one that we're going to have to explore going down the line, of what exactly the connection between the Holocaust and the state in Israel state of Israel are. But in his time, that type of confrontational rhetoric was avoided like the plague by the rest of the American Jewish leadership. Just go back to season 2 and episode 35 and you can see what his contemporary Rabbi Stephen Wise was doing. Despite the confrontational nature of what he had to say, this type of speech actually placed Abba Hillel Silver at the head of the American Zionist movement. In some ways, he became the leader of American Jewry altogether. Now I do want to make clear that Silver's turn towards Zionism was a pragmatic turn, not an ideological one. He simply believed that the world was more likely to come to the aid of the Jews if they presented themselves as a nationality in search of a home rather than refugees seeking aid. Listen to this. Do not think that we are in favor of nationalism. It is considered reprehensible and not part of the tradition of the Jewish prophets. Nationalism is currently the language the world understands and the Jews must have a state. It is only when we finally have a home of our own that we will be able to forget about nationalism and devote ourselves to our true mission, which is to be fighters in the cause of world social justice for the cause of eliminating nationhood and establishing a universal state. Now, we're going to speak a lot in season 3 about this tension between the particular and the universal that you hear in his voice and what I see to be a uniquely American perspective that our particular nationalism should be in service of universal peace. But for now, the very fact that Abba Hillel Silver could make that statement in the midst of the Holocaust speaks volumes about him and the American Zionist vision he represented. But despite this hesitancy around nationalism, David Ben-Gurion saw in Abba Hillel's analysis that the destruction of of European Jewry would help force the gates of Palestine open, a critical source of alliance. Now he finally had an American leader with whom he could work. And so, in 1942, the two joined together with Chaim Weizmann to convene the Biltmore Conference. 600 delegates from the Zionist Organization of America, Hadassah, religious and labor Zionist parties all met at the Biltmore Hotel in New York in order to publish a unified statement of vision for American Zionism. The platform declared that, quote, "The post-war order envisioned by President Roosevelt could not be realized without a solution to the problem of Jewish homelessness. It further called on the British mandate to open the gates of Palestine to all the refugees of Europe immediately. And then, it made a bold call, which up to now had been a complete anathema to American Zionists, and frankly, other Zionists world over, the demand for actual Jewish statehood. The final plank in the conference declaration insists, quote, that Palestine be established as a Jewish commonwealth integrated into the structure of the new democratic world. It's impressive, but making a declaration is one thing. Changing American foreign policy is entirely another. In the wake of the Biltmore conference, Abba Hillel Silver began a frenzied effort to unite American Jewry behind the idea of Jewish statehood. At first glance, it might have seemed an impossible task. I mean, assimilationists, socialists, immigrants just trying to survive. I mean, even American Zionists were ambivalent around actual statehood. But things had changed, and the critical moment arrived in August 1943 as delegates representing almost every stripe of American Jewry assembled at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. And like I said, things had changed, because at this point in American Jewish history, the demographics had shifted. The assimilationist elite was no longer in control. I mean, witness the fact that Stephen Wise and Abba Hillel Silver were rabbis educated, one a product of, and the other educated within the German Jewish tradition of assimilation, and nevertheless were now the heads of American Zionism. The internationalist socialist Yiddish element had been also overtaken to a certain degree by the ethnic Jews. And so, what you found there at the Waldorf conference was a majority who were associated with Zionist organizations. Nevertheless, there was still a lot of opposition to statehood overcome. Even Stephen Wise, who was co-chair with Abba Hillel of the American Zionist Emergency Council, got cold feet at the last moment and began to urge the delegates not to adopt the Biltmore Program's final plank. Silver, in recognition of his sort of fiery nature, had not been given any speaking time at the conference, but the militant Zionist delegates of the American Jewish Congress managed to send him up on the platform anyway. And this is what he had to say. The reconstitution of the Jewish people as a nation in its homeland is not a playful political conceit of ours. It is the cry of despair of a people driven to the wall, fighting for its very life. From the infested, typhus-ridden ghetto of Warsaw, from the death block of Nazi-occupied lands, where myriads of our people are awaiting execution by the slow or the quick method, from a hundred concentration camps which befoul the map of Europe, comes the cry, "Enough! There must be a final end to all this, a sure and certain end." How long is it to last? Are we forever to live a homeless people on the world's crumbs of sympathy? Are we going to take counsel here of fear of what this or that one might say, of how our actions are likely to be misinterpreted, or are we to take counsel of our inner moral convictions, of our faith, of our history, of our achievements, and go forward in faith? We cannot truly rescue the Jews of Europe unless we have free immigration to Palestine. We cannot have free immigration to Palestine unless our political rights are recognized there. Our political rights cannot be recognized there unless our historic connection with the country is acknowledged and our right to build our national home is reaffirmed. These are inseparable links in the chain. The whole chain breaks if one of the links is missing. Do not beguile yourselves. Do not let anyone beguile you. His speech carried the day. Historians say that weeping delegates rose to sing Hatikvah over and over again, and then moved unanimously to endorse the resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth. The president of Hadassah, Tamar de Sola Pool, described it like this. She said, "We have now won over not merely individuals. We have now have at our side whole national organizations with thousands and thousands of members. They are now flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. All that we stand for, all that we struggle for, has become for them, too, an integral ideal." And from the Waldorf conference to Harry Truman's recognition of the state of Israel in 1948 was still a long road, but it was one which Abba Hillel Silver traveled with unparalleled devotion and complete success. I would love to end this episode with a happily ever after, to tell you that in the glow of the success of 1948, all the divisions between American Zionism, the WZO, the leadership of the newborn state of Israel were just wiped away. But it's simply not true. In the wake of victory, many of the differences were put aside, but there were two problems that led to an almost immediate breakdown between Ben Gurion and Abba Hillel Silver. And cuz they're indicative of problems that divide many American Jews and in the Israeli leadership even today, they're worth mentioning. The first was a question of worldview. You know, Abba Hillel Silver visited Israel in 1948, and he gave a news conference on the state of Israel and the world affairs. In it, he said that Israel's orientation should be toward the United Nations, that she should refuse to align with the East-West division that was rapidly developing and shaping the world into a new Cold War. He further emphasized that this policy is actually what made possible the establishment of the state in the first place. In his eyes, the Zionist issue was the only one that had yet helped break down the Iron Curtain between East and West in the UN, and that's a fact that went well beyond the political context of Zionism. Now, Silver's political views were actually a product of his understanding of Judaism's place in modern Western society. He saw Judaism as advancing human progress. In particular, he felt that it needed to lead the fight for political freedom and an end to imperialism and colonialism. In Silver's eyes, the essence of Judaism is the direction of human society toward the eradication of ignorance and racism and the promotion of peace and international collaboration. And therefore, in a sense, the UN was ushering in the Messianic era. We'll talk about Ben-Gurion's Messianic vision in an coming episode. And we're going to deal with the challenges of an ethnic state and the almost tribal nature of society here. But for now, just know that his political vision in particular couldn't have been more different. Ben-Gurion trusted the UN not at all. And in fact, he supported stationing American soldiers in the region immediately upon independence. This is how he saw the post-war world. Quote, "There will be an army in every country. There will be an American army in every country. I saw it start in Africa. I hope they'll come to the land of Israel, too. I pray that they come to the land of Israel. They will have the strength. Americans can send 100,000 soldiers and that will be enough to keep the peace." But aside from this ideological difference, or political one really, there was it was really a practical question that led to the breakdown between the two leaders. In the lead-up to Israel's establishment, Silver was the head of the United Nations delegation that represented the World Zionist Movement. And he was seen by many as a leader on par with Chaim Weizmann and even Ben-Gurion himself. Nonetheless, on the day the state was declared, Silver chose to return from New York back home to Cleveland. The rest of the delegation was stunned. They saw him as almost a traitor. But the reason was very simple. Silver had resolved the tension within himself between being a Zionist and being a leader of American Jewry long ago. And once the declaration was achieved, his job as a Zionist was done. Now, it was Friday and his congregation was waiting. Although I'd have to say it seems his mind wasn't entirely made up because just after Shabbat, Silver called Ben-Gurion and asked if he should make aliyah. If he should come home to the newborn state of Israel. And what do you think happened? Ben-Gurion, the ideologue, the true believer in a Zionism founded on the negation of exile and the immediate in-gathering of the Jews, did not hesitate. He told Abba Hillel to stay in the States. He told him to fight to have the military embargo lifted and to raise funds for Israel. Now, there's an important arc here for American Zionism, one that we're going to trace in coming episodes. From independent movement to funding source to Israel lobby. But, I'm not going there right now. I want to end on a more personal note. Cuz like a loyal soldier, Abba Hillel carried out his assigned task and like the leader that he was, he succeeded. But, when the big loan came through and President Truman's personal advisor called to inform him, he was astounded to hear that Abba Hillel Silver had resigned from all of his political posts within the Zionist movement. The details of the struggle between Abba Hillel and Ben-Gurion aren't crucial to our story right now. Just let it be known that Abba Hillel Silver made an attempt at Hafrada, at a separation within the World Zionist Movement. He insisted that the political leadership of the new state, meaning Ben-Gurion, resign from the leadership of the World Zionist Movement because in Silver's eyes, to be both a leader of the state of Israel and of the Zionist movement was to risk dual loyalty between being an Israeli and being a Zionist. But, Ben-Gurion had no intention of allowing for the formation of an autonomous Zionist force outside of Israel, not any more than he had of allowing for independent political base that opposed him within Israel. And so he forced Abba Hillel Silver out of the Zionist movement with the same alacrity he used to keep Menachem Begin out of the government. Although fortunately for Silver with more peaceful means. Ben Gurion's fanatic devotion to the unification of the state, that statist philosophy which really danced around the edges of fascism and did much damage while at the same time succeeding against incalculable odds in bringing an almost miraculous state into being is going to be a topic of discussion for some time going forward. But for now, I just want to end with this observation. Once Israel became independent and Abba Hillel Silver was forced out of his position efforts by the leaders of American Zionism to mold the Zionist vision came to an almost complete stop. Now, it's true that it was partly due the opposition of Ben Gurion and the other leaders of the new state who quickly came to see their intervention as a meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. But even more crucially I think it was a result of the mistake that Abba Hillel made in listening to Ben Gurion. To this very day, when thank God American Jewry has begun to re-engage their role in shaping the vision of Israel the fundamental problem remains the same. You cannot direct the development of the Jewish state while you remain in America. Okay, I just want to thank a few people. I want to thank you actually for putting up with the hoarseness in my voice. Bless me that I should get rid of this cold. And I want to thank people who give their hard earned money to make this show happen, to give it free and widely available. And I want to invite you to join them right now. Help me make history this season. Go to my website jewishstory.co and you in the upper right hand corner you'll see a button there there it says be a patron you can click on through to get a little bit of per podcast support. I want to thank the Land of Israel Network that's the landofisrael.com for building a platform that allows me to reach so many wonderful people. I want to thank the Pardes Institute p a r d e s dot org dot il for building an educational institution that allows me to touch the hearts and minds of so many amazing Jews. And I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rob Lonner