Download or read book Rabbi Outcast written by Jack Ross and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dramatic changes have taken place in the last decade with respect to the views of the American Jewish community toward Israel and Zionism. Since the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000, the involvement of the Israel lobby in precipitating the Iraq War and promoting war on Iran, and Israel's widely condemned wars in Lebanon and Gaza, large swaths of the American Jewish community have been disenchanted with Israel and Zionism as at no other time since the founding of the State of Israel. However, anti-Zionism in America has a long history. Elmer Berger was undoubtedly the best-known Jewish anti-Zionist during most of his lifetime, particularly from World War II through the 1967 Six-Day War and its aftermath. A Reform rabbi, Berger served throughout that period as the executive director of the American Council for Judaism, an anti-Zionist organization founded by leading Reform rabbis. Author Jack Ross places liberal Jewish anti-Zionism (as opposed to that of Orthodox or revolutionary socialist Jews) in historical perspective. That brand of anti-Zionism was virtually embodied by Rabbi Berger and his predecessors in the Reform rabbinate. He advocated forcefully for his position, much to the chagrin of his Zionist detractors. The growing renaissance of liberal Jewish anti-Zionism, combined with the forgotten work of Rabbi Berger and the American Council for Judaism, makes a compelling case for revisiting his work in this full-length, definitive biography.

Download or read book Our Palestine Question written by Geoffrey Levin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-28 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history of the American Jewish relationship with Israel focused on its most urgent and sensitive issue: the question of Palestinian rights American Jews began debating Palestinian rights issues even before Israel’s founding in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews who, in the early decades of Israel’s existence, called for an honest reckoning with the moral and political plight of Palestinians. These now‑forgotten voices, which include an aid‑worker‑turned‑academic with Palestinian Sephardic roots, a former Yiddish journalist, anti‑Zionist Reform rabbis, and young left‑wing Zionist activists, felt drawn to support Palestinian rights by their understanding of Jewish history, identity, and ethics. They sometimes worked with mainstream American Jewish leaders who feared that ignoring Palestinian rights could foster antisemitism, leading them to press Israeli officials for reform. But Israeli diplomats viewed any American Jewish interest in Palestinian affairs with deep suspicion, provoking a series of quiet confrontations that ultimately kept Palestinian rights off the American Jewish agenda up to the present era. In reconstructing this hidden history, Levin lays the groundwork for more forthright debates over Palestinian rights issues, American Jewish identity, and the U.S.‑Israel relationship more broadly.

Download or read book Prophets Outcast written by Adam Shatz and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes writings by Isaac Deutscher, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Leon Trotsky, I. F. Stone, Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, and others.

Download or read book Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land written by Donald E. Wagner and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical examination of political Zionism, a topic often considered taboo in the West, is long overdue. Moreover, the discussion of Christian Zionism is usually confined to Evangelical and fundamentalist settings. The present volume will break the silence currently reigning in many religious, political, and academic circles and, in so doing, will provoke and inspire a new, challenging conversation on theological and ethical issues arising from various aspects of Zionism--a conversation that is vital to the quest for a just peace in Israel and Palestine. The eight authors offer a rich diversity of religious faith, academic research, and practical experience, as they represent all three Abrahamic faiths and five different Christian traditions. Among the many themes that run through Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land is the contrast between exclusivist narratives, both biblical and political, and the more inclusive narratives of the prophetic Scriptures, which provide the theological foundation and the moral imperative for human liberation. Readers will be drawn into a compelling, readable, and stimulating series of essays that tackle many of the complex issues that still confound clergy, politicians, diplomats, and academic experts.

Download or read book The Threshold of Dissent written by Marjorie N. Feld and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2024-05-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the long history of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist American Jews Throughout the twentieth century, American Jewish communal leaders projected a unified position of unconditional support for Israel, cementing it as a cornerstone of American Jewish identity. This unwavering position served to marginalize and label dissenters as antisemitic, systematically limiting the threshold of acceptable criticism. In pursuit of this forced consensus, these leaders entered Cold War alliances, distanced themselves from progressive civil rights and anti-colonial movements, and turned a blind eye to human rights abuses in Israel. In The Threshold of Dissent, Marjorie N. Feld instead shows that today’s vociferous arguments among American Jews over Israel and Zionism are but the newest chapter in a fraught history that stretches from the nineteenth century. Drawing on rich archival research and examining wide-ranging intellectual currents—from the Reform movement and the Yiddish left to anti-colonialism and Jewish feminism—Feld explores American Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel from the 1880s to the 1980s. The book argues that the tireless policing of contrary perspectives led each generation of dissenters to believe that it was the first to question unqualified support for Israel. The Threshold of Dissent positions contemporary critics within a century-long debate about the priorities of the American Jewish community, one which holds profound implications for inclusion in American Jewish communal life and for American Jews’ participation in coalitions working for justice. At a time when American Jewish support for Israel has been diminishing, The Threshold of Dissent uncovers a deeper—and deeply contested—history of intracommunal debate over Zionism among American Jews.

Download or read book At Home in Exile written by Alan Wolfe and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eloquent, controversial argument that says, for the first time in their long history, Jews are free to live in a Jewish state—or lead secure and productive lives outside it Since the beginnings of Zionism in the twentieth century, many Jewish thinkers have considered it close to heresy to validate life in the Diaspora. Jews in Europe and America faced “a life of pointless struggle and futile suffering, of ambivalence, confusion, and eternal impotence,” as one early Zionist philosopher wrote, echoing a widespread and vehement disdain for Jews living outside Israel. This thinking, in a more understated but still pernicious form, continues to the present: the Holocaust tried to kill all of us, many Jews believe, and only statehood offers safety. But what if the Diaspora is a blessing in disguise? In At Home in Exile, renowned scholar and public intellectual Alan Wolfe, writing for the first time about his Jewish heritage, makes an impassioned, eloquent, and controversial argument that Jews should take pride in their Diasporic tradition. It is true that Jews have experienced more than their fair share of discrimination and destruction in exile, and there can be no doubt that anti-Semitism persists throughout the world and often rears its ugly head. Yet for the first time in history, Wolfe shows, it is possible for Jews to lead vibrant, successful, and, above all else, secure lives in states in which they are a minority. Drawing on centuries of Jewish thinking and writing, from Maimonides to Philip Roth, David Ben Gurion to Hannah Arendt, Wolfe makes a compelling case that life in the Diaspora can be good for the Jews no matter where they live, Israel very much included—as well as for the non-Jews with whom they live, Israel once again included. Not only can the Diaspora offer Jews the opportunity to reach a deep appreciation of pluralism and a commitment to fighting prejudice, but in an era of rising inequalities and global instability, the whole world can benefit from Jews’ passion for justice and human dignity. Wolfe moves beyond the usual polemical arguments and celebrates a universalistic Judaism that is desperately needed if Israel is to survive. Turning our attention away from the Jewish state, where half of world Jewry lives, toward the pluralistic and vibrant places the other half have made their home, At Home in Exile is an inspiring call for a Judaism that isn’t defensive and insecure but is instead open and inquiring.

Download or read book Rabbis of our Time written by Marek Čejka and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-16 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term ‘rabbi’ predominantly denotes Jewish men qualified to interpret the Torah and apply halacha, or those entrusted with the religious leadership of a Jewish community. However, the role of the rabbi has been understood differently across the Jewish world. While in Israel they control legally powerful rabbinical courts and major religious political parties, in the Jewish communities of the Diaspora this role is often limited by legal regulations of individual countries. However, the significance of past and present rabbis and their religious and political influence endures across the world. Rabbis of Our Time provides a comprehensive overview of the most influential rabbinical authorities of Judaism in the 20th and 21st Century. Through focussing on the most theologically influential rabbis of the contemporary era and examining their political impact, it opens a broader discussion of the relationship between Judaism and politics. It looks at the various centres of current Judaism and Jewish thinking, especially the State of Israel and the USA, as well as locating rabbis in various time periods. Through interviews and extracts from religious texts and books authored by rabbis, readers will discover more about a range of rabbis, from those before the formation of Israel to the most famous Chief Rabbis of Israel, as well as those who did not reach the highest state religious functions, but influenced the relation between Judaism and Israel by other means. The rabbis selected represent all major contemporary streams of Judaism, from ultra-Orthodox/Haredi to Reform and Liberal currents, and together create a broader picture of the scope of contemporary Jewish thinking in a theological and political context. An extensive and detailed source of information on the varieties of Jewish thinking influencing contemporary Judaism and the modern State of Israel, this book is of interest to students and scholars of Jewish Studies, as well as Religion and Politics.

Download or read book American Jewish Year Book 2012 written by Arnold Dashefsky and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-09 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2012 American Jewish Year Book, “The Annual Record of American Jewish Civilization,” contains major chapters on Jewish secularism (Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar), Canadian Jewry (Morton Weinfeld, David Koffman, and Randal Schnoor), national affairs (Ethan Felson), Jewish communal affairs (Lawrence Grossman), Jewish population in the United States (Ira Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky), and World Jewish population (Sergio DellaPergola). These chapters provide insight into major trends in the North American and world Jewish community. The volume also acts as a resource for the American Jewish community and for academics studying that community by supplying obituaries and lists of Jewish Federations, Jewish Community Centers, national Jewish organizations, Jewish overnight camps, Jewish museums, Holocaust museums, local and national Jewish periodicals, Jewish honorees, major recent events in the American Jewish community, and academic journals, articles, websites, and books. The volume should prove useful to social scientists and historians of the American Jewish community, Jewish communal workers, the press, and others interested in American and Canadian Jews.​

Download or read book Outcast written by Shimon Ballas and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2007-04-22 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haroun Soussan, narrator of Outcast and a Jewish convert to Islam, is a civil engineer and historian who's just completed his life's work, The Jews and History. The book opens with him getting an award from Saddam Hussein during the time of the Iran-Iraq War. Written in the form of an autobiography, the narrative moves in and out of the present, the recent and more distant past, providing a unique and intimate chronicle of Iraq's contemporary political history.

Download or read book The Frozen Rabbi written by Steve Stern and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rabbi Eliezer ben Zephyr is inadvertently frozen in 1890 and, after being transported to twenty-first century Memphis, is accidently thawed by fifteen-year-old Bernie Karp, who begins to follow the rabbi's teachings with unforeseen consequences.

Download or read book City on a Hilltop written by Sara Yael Hirschhorn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Israel’s 1967 war, more than 60,000 Jewish-Americans have settled in the occupied territories, transforming politics and sometimes committing shocking acts of terrorism. Yet little is known about why they chose to live at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sara Yael Hirschhorn unsettles stereotypes about these liberal idealists.

Download or read book Zionism through Christian Lenses written by Carole Monica Burnett and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dear to the hearts of many Christians is the land of the Bible, which today is convulsed by strife. Contradictory claims about the past, present, and future of this land can bewilder us. The essays in this volume invite Christians of every denomination to share in perspectives that are solidly grounded in Scripture and tradition, yet serve as alternatives to the currently prevailing approaches. A Lutheran, two Roman Catholics, two Episcopalians (one of whom is also a member of the American Baptist Church), an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and a Congregational (United Church of Christ) pastor explore the ramifications, for today's ongoing crisis, of ancient Israel's Covenant, of the early church's theological insights, and of the post-Reformation experiences of various branches of Christianity.

Download or read book We Are Not One written by Eric Alterman and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bestselling historian uncovers the surprising roots of America’s long alliance with Israel and its troubling consequences Fights about the fate of the state of Israel, and the Zionist movement that gave birth to it, have long been a staple of both Jewish and American political culture. But despite these arguments’ significance to American politics, American Jewish life, and to Israel itself, no one has ever systematically examined their history and explained why they matter. In We Are Not One, historian Eric Alterman traces this debate from its nineteenth-century origins. Following Israel’s 1948–1949 War of Independence (called the “nakba” or “catastrophe” by Palestinians), few Americans, including few Jews, paid much attention to Israel or the challenges it faced. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, however, almost overnight support for Israel became the primary component of American Jews’ collective identity. Over time, Jewish organizations joined forces with conservative Christians and neoconservative pundits and politicos to wage a tenacious fight to define Israel’s image in the US media, popular culture, Congress, and college campuses. Deeply researched, We Are Not One reveals how our consensus on Israel and Palestine emerged and why, today, it is fracturing.

Download or read book Unsettled written by Oren Kroll-Zeldin and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Unsettled examines the role of young American Jews in the Palestine solidarity movement and argues that their activism and commitment to ending the occupation and Israeli apartheid is a Jewish value, which is a necessary response to the changing conditions of American Jewish life in the twenty-first century"--

Download or read book A Shadow over Palestine written by Keith P. Feldman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Best Book in Humanities and Cultural Studies (Literary Studies), Association for Asian American Studies Upon signing the first U.S. arms agreement with Israel in 1962, John F. Kennedy assured Golda Meir that the United States had “a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East,” comparable only to that of the United States with Britain. After more than five decades such a statement might seem incontrovertible—and yet its meaning has been fiercely contested from the start. A Shadow over Palestine brings a new, deeply informed, and transnational perspective to the decades and the cultural forces that have shaped sharply differing ideas of Israel’s standing with the United States—right up to the violent divisions of today. Focusing on the period from 1960 to 1985, author Keith P. Feldman reveals the centrality of Israel and Palestine in postwar U.S. imperial culture. Some representations of the region were used to manufacture “commonsense” racial ideologies underwriting the conviction that liberal democracy must coexist with racialized conditions of segregation, border policing, poverty, and the repression of dissent. Others animated vital critiques of these conditions, often forging robust if historically obscured border-crossing alternatives. In this rich cultural history of the period, Feldman deftly analyzes how artists, intellectuals, and organizations—from the United Nations, the Black Panther Party, and the Association of Arab American University Graduates to James Baldwin, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Edward Said, and June Jordan—linked the unfulfilled promise of liberal democracy in the United States with the perpetuation of settler democracy in Israel and the possibility of Palestine’s decolonization. In one of his last essays, published in 2003, Edward Said wrote, “In America, Palestine and Israel are regarded as local, not foreign policy, matters.” A Shadow over Palestine maps this jagged terrain on which this came to be, amid a wealth of robust alternatives, and the undeterred violence at home and abroad unleashed as a result of this special relationship.

Download or read book America s Road to Jerusalem written by Jason M. Olson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the role of the Six-Day War in American Protestant politics and culture. The author argues that American foreign policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict, culminating in the Trump Administration’s 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and the domestic Evangelical communities who supported it, has a direct correlation with the long-term consequences of the 1967 Six-Day War. For most of America’s history, biblical literalists, or Evangelicals, dominated the religious culture of the country. But, in 1925, the Scopes trial on science, evolution, and religion embarrassed Evangelicals and caused them to retreat from American culture and politics. Modern and liberal Protestants won dominance and established control in nearly all of the Mainline seminaries, publishing houses, and denominations, leading to the creation of the National Council of Churches by 1950. This book argues that the Six-Day War reversed that power structure in American religion, with Evangelicals returning to a place of prominence in American culture and politics. Whereas the Scopes trial showed much of American Protestantism that the Modernists had the right understanding of the Bible; the Six-Day War demonstrated that, ironically, Evangelicals may have had it right all along. They used this historic leverage to vaunt themselves into the highest planes of American life, with Billy Graham becoming “America’s Pastor.” In this historic process, the 1967 war between Israel and the surrounding Arab states clarified the way those different branches of American Protestantism thought about the Arab-Israeli conflict, particularly the issue of Jerusalem. Indeed, the nature of the Six-Day War was deep and appeared to be of Biblical proportions. Because Israel gained territories in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the ancient Biblical heartlands formerly held by Jordan; historical, messianic, and even apocalyptic intrusions entered the various branches of American Protestantism. In some branches, supersessionism, a belief that the Church had replaced the Jewish people as God’s chosen, was stoked. In other branches, supersessionism was rejected and the nature of Judaism and its connection to the Holy Land was re-evaluated. The important point is that the territories that Israel captured had thick theological meaning, and this would force all branches of American Protestantism to reconsider their assumptions about Judaism and Zionism, as well as Islam and Palestinian nationalism. Evangelicalism.

Download or read book The Socialist Party of America written by Jack Ross and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 825 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when the word “socialist” is but one of numerous political epithets that are generally divorced from the historical context of America’s political history, The Socialist Party of America presents a new, mature understanding of America’s most important minor political party of the twentieth century. From the party’s origins in the labor and populist movements at the end of the nineteenth century, to its heyday with the charismatic Eugene V. Debs, and to its persistence through the Depression and the Second World War under the steady leadership of “America’s conscience,” Norman Thomas, The Socialist Party of America guides readers through the party’s twilight, ultimate demise, and the successor groups that arose following its collapse. Based on archival research, Jack Ross’s study challenges the orthodoxies of both sides of the historiographical debate as well as assumptions about the Socialist Party in historical memory. Ross similarly covers the related emergence of neoconservatism and other facets of contemporary American politics and assesses some of the more sensational charges from the right about contemporary liberalism and the “radicalism” of Barack Obama.