Download or read book The Downfall of Abba Hillel Silver and the Foundation of Israel written by Ofer Shiff and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early February 1949, American Jewry’s most popular and powerful leader, Abba Hillel Silver (1893–1963), had summarily resigned from all his official positions within the Zionist movement and had left New York for Cleveland, returning to his post as a Reform rabbi. During the second half of the 1940s, Silver was the most outspoken proponent of the founding of a sovereign Jewish state. He was the most instrumental American Jewish leader in the political struggle that led to the foundation of the State of Israel. Paradoxically, this historic victory also heralded Silver’s personal defeat. Soon after Israel’s declaration of independence, Silver and many of his American Zionist colleagues were relegated to the sidelines of the Zionist movement. Almost overnight, the influential leader—one who had been admired and feared by supporters and opponents—was stripped of his power within both the Zionist and the American Jewish arenas. Shiff’s book discerns the various aspects of the striking turnabout in Silver’s political fate, describing the personal tragic story of a leader who was defeated by his own victory and the much broader intra-Zionist battle that erupted in full force immediately after the founding of Israel. Drawing extensively on Silver’s own archival material, Shiff presents an enlightening portrait of a critical episode in Jewish history. This book is highly relevant for anyone who attempts to understand the complex homeland–diaspora relations between Israel and American Jewry.
Download or read book The Downfall of Abba Hillel Silver and the Foundation of Israel written by Ofer Shiff and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early February 1949, American Jewry’s most popular and powerful leader, Abba Hillel Silver (1893–1963), had summarily resigned from all his official positions within the Zionist movement and had left New York for Cleveland, returning to his post as a Reform rabbi. During the second half of the 1940s, Silver was the most outspoken proponent of the founding of a sovereign Jewish state. He was the most instrumental American Jewish leader in the political struggle that led to the foundation of the State of Israel. Paradoxically, this historic victory also heralded Silver’s personal defeat. Soon after Israel’s declaration of independence, Silver and many of his American Zionist colleagues were relegated to the sidelines of the Zionist movement. Almost overnight, the influential leader—one who had been admired and feared by supporters and opponents—was stripped of his power within both the Zionist and the American Jewish arenas. Shiff’s book discerns the various aspects of the striking turnabout in Silver’s political fate, describing the personal tragic story of a leader who was defeated by his own victory and the much broader intra-Zionist battle that erupted in full force immediately after the founding of Israel. Drawing extensively on Silver’s own archival material, Shiff presents an enlightening portrait of a critical episode in Jewish history. This book is highly relevant for anyone who attempts to understand the complex homeland–diaspora relations between Israel and American Jewry.
Download or read book Cleveland Jews and the Making of a Midwestern Community written by Sean Martin and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The robust Jewish community of Cleveland, Ohio is the largest Midwestern Jewish community with about 80,000 Jewish residents. Historically, it has been one of the largest hubs of American Jewish life outside of the East Coast. Yet there is a critical gap in the literature relating to Jewish Cleveland, its suburbs, and the Midwestern Jewish experience. Cleveland's Jews in the Urban Midwest remedies this gap, and adds to an emerging subfield in American Jewish history that moves away from the East Coast to explore Jewish life across the United States, in cities including Chicago and Detroit, and across regions like the West Coast. Cleveland's Jews in the Urban Midwest features ten diverse studies from prominent international scholars, addressing a wide range of subjects and ultimately enhancing our understanding of regional, urban, and Jewish American history. Focusing on the twentieth century specifically, the historians included in this collection address critical questions about Jewish Cleveland in the history of the United States. Essays investigate Jewish philanthropy, comics, gender, religious identity and education from the perspectives of both Reform and Orthodox Jewish communities, participation in social service organizations, and the Soviet Jewish movement, among other subjects, and reveal the different roles these subjects play in shaping Jewish communities over time. Uniquely, this is a work of regional history that engages fully in parallel conversations in Jewish history and urban history, making the volume a key addition to these three dynamic fields"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Advocating for Israel written by Natan Aridan and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study analyzes the unique triangular relationship between Israel’s diplomatic representatives, pro-Israel advocates, and US administrations draws on a wealth of Hebrew and English primary documentation that includes; government archives, surveillance records, wiretappings, personal oral interviews, and diaries of key individuals. Natan Aridan demonstrates how a small new state succeeded in establishing a level of political, economic and military aid that has made for an alliance that is unique in the American experience. Revealed in considerable depth are the dilemmas facing Israeli and US leaders, and pro-Israel organizations and the extent to which individual Jewish leaders maneuvered as conduits between Israeli governments and US administrations, whose senior dramatis personae in turn attempted to influence, moderate, restrain, and change the course of policy decisions and actions. Each administration had multiple voices and international contingencies presented different challenges, all of which had a major impact in fluctuations, and shifts in policies toward Israel. There was nothing inevitable about military and financial support for Israel. It was only by the end of the period that a distinct pattern began to emerge. Eventual qualified US support took a long and complicated path developed over many decades on multidimensional levels. The book refutes insidious allegations that from Israel’s inception Jewish influence and a powerful Israel lobby hijacked US foreign policy to achieve unreserved military and financial support for Israel that undermined the best interests of the US. The author illustrates one of the poorly misunderstood aspects on the subject by demonstrating how Israeli governments were more astute and powerful than previous scholars have realized and that they were in fact pulling the strings far more than AIPAC and wealthy Jews. He also demonstrates that a contributing factor on the decision to aid Israel (understated in previous research) lay in Israel exploiting its ‘nuisance value.’
Download or read book Maurice Samuel written by Alan T. Levenson and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This short intellectual biography reassesses one of the premier Jewish humanists of the mid-twentieth century, the Rumanian-born, English-educated, American belletrist Maurice Samuel. Although he spoke in a staccato Midlands accent, Samuel left Manchester, England in 1913, joined the American Army, served in military intelligence in World War I, and became a United States citizen. Samuel resettled his family in Palestine in 1929, then returned to the US, and spent his most creative years in New York City. A diaspora intellectual, or "rootless cosmopolitan," as Alan Levenson describes him, Samuel made an indelible mark on many features of contemporary Jewish thought and culture"--
Download or read book UNSCOP and the Arab Israeli Conflict written by Elad Ben-Dror and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first comprehensive account of the work of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), constituted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947 to study the situation in Palestine at the end of the British Mandate and make recommendations about its political future. Utilizing a wealth of archival documentation, some of it never before studied, Elad Ben-Dror explores the various aspects of UNSCOP’s activity to understand how it came to determine the fate of the country’s inhabitants. The book analyzes the methods and motivations of the various members, with special attention given to the personal viewpoint of each member of the committee. Through this Ben-Dror shows that the partition recommendation emerged after a long process of study, debate, and compromise that was very much dependent on the characters and circumstances of the individual members of the committee. UNSCOP and the Arab-Israeli Conflict will be a key text in understanding the role of UNSCOP in shaping the modern Middle East. It will be appropriate for scholars and students of political science, Palestine and Israeli history, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the UN and diplomacy, and conflict resolution.
Download or read book AIPAC s Grassroots Path to Congress written by Kobby Barda and published by Bar-Dea LTD. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s origins, foundations, and organizational structure. Isaiah “Si” Kenen, AIPAC’s founder and long-time leader, created what can be described as the organization’s three-dimensional inverted pyramid, giving it far-reaching influence and impact. Following Kenen’s work through AIPAC’s inception and reaching into the mid-1970s, the book looks at key moments and decisions in the years under Kenen’s leadership. These decisions helped a small lobby with minimal manpower and resources become a well-established network of organizations, individuals, and communities spanning the entire United States and advancing American relations with Israel. From Israeli and American archival materials and protocols, interviews, news articles, and academic papers, the book analyzes Kenen’s decisions and AIPAC’s structure. Using the lens and language of management and human resources, the author sheds new light on the topic in this adaptation of his Thesis dissertation. The dissertation was awarded top honors on the Dean’s List for 2020.
Download or read book Our American Israel written by Amy Kaplan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential account of America’s most controversial alliance that reveals how the United States came to see Israel as an extension of itself, and how that strong and divisive partnership plays out in our own time. Our American Israel tells the story of how a Jewish state in the Middle East came to resonate profoundly with a broad range of Americans in the twentieth century. Beginning with debates about Zionism after World War II, Israel’s identity has been entangled with America’s belief in its own exceptional nature. Now, in the twenty-first century, Amy Kaplan challenges the associations underlying this special alliance. Through popular narratives expressed in news media, fiction, and film, a shared sense of identity emerged from the two nations’ histories as settler societies. Americans projected their own origin myths onto Israel: the biblical promised land, the open frontier, the refuge for immigrants, the revolt against colonialism. Israel assumed a mantle of moral authority, based on its image as an “invincible victim,” a nation of intrepid warriors and concentration camp survivors. This paradox persisted long after the Six-Day War, when the United States rallied behind a story of the Israeli David subduing the Arab Goliath. The image of the underdog shattered when Israel invaded Lebanon and Palestinians rose up against the occupation. Israel’s military was strongly censured around the world, including notes of dissent in the United States. Rather than a symbol of justice, Israel became a model of military strength and technological ingenuity. In America today, Israel’s political realities pose difficult challenges. Turning a critical eye on the turbulent history that bound the two nations together, Kaplan unearths the roots of present controversies that may well divide them in the future.
Download or read book Israel s Armor written by Walter L. Hixson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-11 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Israel's Armor provides a foundational history of the Israel lobby and its influence on American foreign policy.
Download or read book A Link in the Great American Chain written by Ira Robinson and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2023-05-16 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together six articles the author has published in recent years on the development of the Orthodox Jewish community in Cleveland, Ohio. While a number of scholars have ably presented important parts of the history of Jewish Orthodoxy in Cleveland, Ohio, this book is a first attempt to deal comprehensively with the story of Cleveland Orthodox Judaism. Chapters one and two, taken together, present a connected narrative history of the evolution of the Jewish Orthodox community in Cleveland, Ohio from its beginnings to the early twenty-first century. The succeeding chapters present in greater detail persons and institutions of great importance to the historical development of the Orthodox community.
Download or read book Chaim Weizmann written by Jehuda Reinharz and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 927 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A magisterial biography of Israel's first president. Beginning with his childhood in Belorussia and concluding with his tenure as president, Reinharz and Golani describe how a Russian Jew, who immigrated to the United Kingdom in the early twentieth century, was able to advance the goals of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist Organization. "--
Download or read book American Jewish Year Book 2015 written by Arnold Dashefsky and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-03 with total page 908 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Year Book, now in its 115th year, provides insight into major trends in the North American Jewish communities and is the Annual Record of the North American Jewish Communities. The first two chapters of Part I examine Jewish immigrant groups to the US and Jewish life on campus. Chapters on “National Affairs” and “Jewish Communal Affairs” analyze the year’s events. Three chapters analyze the demography and geography of the US, Canada, and world Jewish populations. Part II provides Jewish Federations, Jewish Community Centers, social service agencies, national organizations, overnight camps, museums, and Israeli consulates. The final chapters present national and local Jewish periodicals and broadcast media; academic resources, including Jewish Studies Programs, books, articles websites, and research libraries; and lists of major events in the past year, Jewish honorees, and obituaries. For those interested in the North American Jewish community—scholars, service providers, volunteers—this volume undoubtedly provides the single best source of information on the structure, dynamics, and ongoing religious, political, and social challenges confronting the community. It should be on the bookshelf of everyone interested in monitoring the dynamics of change in the Jewish communities of North America. Sidney Goldstein, Founder and Director, Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University, and Alice Goldstein, Population Studies and Traini ng Center, Brown University The American Jewish Year Book is a unique and valuable resource for Jewish community professionals. It is part almanac, directory, encyclopedia and all together a volume to have within easy reach. It is the best, concise diary of trends, events, and personalities of interest for the past year. We should all welcome the Year Book’s publication as a sign of vitality for the Jewish community. Brenda Gevertz, Executive Director, JPRO Network, the Jewish Professional Resource Organization
Download or read book Routledge Handbook on Zionism written by Colin Shindler and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-28 with total page 739 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook, the first of its kind, provides an in- depth examination of the evolution, ideology, history and culture of Zionism and its various movements. Distancing itself from the slogans and cliches of advocacy, the volume provides much-needed context and background on the emergence of Zionism. The Handbook is divided into eight parts – with contributions from some forty of the world’s leading scholars on Zionism –to elucidate its various strands. These include underrepresented areas such as Zionism in the Arab World before the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionism and Marxism, the emergence of the Zionist Right, the language war between Hebrew and Yiddish, the struggle for Jewish women’s suffrage, the poetry of Lea Goldberg, and Zionism in emerging new Jewish communities in locations like Papua New Guinea, Guatemala and Zimbabwe. Another section on Zionism in repressive states stretches from an examination of Zionism in Hitler’s Germany to the Ayatollahs’ Iran today; from subterranean Zionism in Stalin’s Russia to apartheid South Africa. The volume concludes by examining current issues, including the relationship between evangelicals and Zionism in the US, and the representation of Zionism in the age of the internet. Providing a sweeping overview of Zionism in its many forms, the volume will appeal to students, researchers and general readers interested in Jewish studies in the Middle East and beyond, as well as those seeking to understand the roots of contemporary Israel.
Download or read book Assimilated Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto 1940 1943 written by Katarzyna Person and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews in Nazi-occupied Warsaw during the 1940s were under increasing threat as they were stripped of their rights and forced to live in a guarded ghetto away from the non-Jewish Polish population. Within the ghettos, a small but distinct group existed: the assimilated, acculturated, and baptized Jews. Unwilling to integrate into the Jewish community and unable to merge with the Polish one, they formed a group of their own, remaining in a state of suspension throughout the interwar period. In 1940, with the closure of the Jewish residential quarter in Warsaw, their identity was chosen for them. Person looks at what it meant for assimilated Jews to leave their prewar neighborhoods, understood as both a physical environment and a mixed Polish Jewish cultural community, and to enter a new, Jewish neighborhood. She reveals the diversity of this group and how its members’ identity shaped their involvement in and contribution to ghetto life. In the first English-language study of this small but influential group, Person illuminates the important role of the acculturated and assimilated Jews in the history and memory of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Download or read book The Children of La Hille written by Walter W. Reed and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the horrors of Kristallnacht in November of 1938, frightened parents were forced to find refuge for their children, far from the escalating anti-Jewish violence. To that end, a courageous group of Belgian women organized a desperate and highly dangerous rescue mission to usher nearly 1,000 children out of Germany and Austria. Of these children, ninety-three were placed on a freight train, traveling through the night away from their families and into the relative safety of Vichy France. Ranging in age from five to sixteen years, the children along with their protectors spent a harsh winter in an abandoned barn with little food before eventually finding shelter in the isolated Château de la Hille in southern France. While several of the youngest children were safely routed to the United States, those who remained continued to be hunted by Nazi soldiers until finally smuggled illegally across the Swiss Alps to safe houses. Remarkably, all but eleven of the original ninety-three children survived the war due to the unrelenting efforts of their protectors and their own resilience. In The Children of La Hille, Reed narrates this stunning firsthand account of the amazing rescue and the countless heroic efforts of those who helped along the way. As one of the La Hille children, Reed recalls with poignant detail traveling from lice-infested, abandoned convents to stately homes in the foothills of the Pyrenees, always scrambling to keep one step ahead of the Nazis. Drawing upon survivor interviews, journals, and letters, Reed affectionately describes rousing afternoon swims in a nearby natural pond and lively renditions of Molière plays performed for an audience of local farmers. He tells of heart-stopping near misses as the Vichy police roundups intensified, forcing children to hide in the woods to escape capture. The Children of La Hille gives readers an intimate glimpse of a harrowing moment in history, paying tribute to ordinary people acting in extraordinary ways.
Download or read book One Step Toward Jerusalem written by Sándor Bacskai and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-08 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1997, Bacskai's powerful ethnography portrays the political, religious, and individual forces that came to bear on the Orthodox Jewish tradition as it struggled for survival in the aftermath of the Holocaust in Hungary. Jews who returned to their homes eagerly reestablished their close-knit community lives. However, they were greeted with hostility and faced daily prejudice. Following the fall of Hungarian democracy, the number of Orthodox Jewish congregations dramatically decreased. Those who remained struggled to combat antisemitism and antizionism. It is these individuals, the bearers of the Orthodox Jewish tradition, whom Bacskai celebrates and gives voice to in One Step toward Jerusalem. Through detailed interviews and intimate profiles, Bacskai narrates the individual stories of survival and the collective story of Jews struggling to maintain a community despite significant resistance.
Download or read book We Are Jews Again written by Yuli Kosharovsky and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kosharovsky’s authoritative four-volume history of the Jewish movement in the Soviet Union is now available in a condensed and edited volume that makes this compelling insider’s account of Soviet Jewish activism after Stalin available to a wider audience. Originally published in Russian from 2008 to 2012, "We Are Jews Again" chronicles the struggles of Jews who wanted nothing more than the freedom to learn Hebrew, the ability to provide a Jewish education for their children, and the right to immigrate to Israel. Through dozens of interviews with former refuseniks and famous activists, Kosharovsky provides a vivid and intimate view of the Jewish movement and a detailed account of the persecution many faced from Soviet authorities.
