Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism, 1942-1948 (review)

110 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 Why did none remain in the area? Where did they go? What had been their relationship with their parents, their community, their culture? Though we shall long remain in Lowenstein's debt for the wealth of schoiarly detail with which he illuminates the structures of institutions established by German-Jewish immigrants in Washington Heights, we await the future reporting of the more intimate, interpersonal, and even psychological processes that seem to have made that community such a transitory historical phenomenon. Egon Mayer Department of Sociology Brooklyn College Jews Against Zionism: The American CouncilforJudaism, 1942-1948, by Thomas A. Kolsky. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990. 269 pp. 139.95. Although the American Council for Judaism is best known for its vehement opposition to Zionism, it actually originated not in reaction to Zionism per se, but rather in response to the endorsement by a Reform rabbinical convention, in 1942, of a resolution calling for the creation of a Jewish army to fight alongside the Allies in World War Two. Conceived by its rabbinical founders as a tool for promoting denationalized, classical Reform Judaism, of which anti-Zionism was only one aspect, the Council became obsessed with Zionism only after it came under the control of lay Reform activists in 1943. The circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Council are among the many interesting and sometimes surprising episodes recounted in this study of a long-neglected but historically significant American Jewish organization. Thomas Kolsky is plowing virgin soil here, unearthing for the first time a substantial quantity of vital information about a controversial organization that aroused passions and inflamed tempers throughout the American Jewish community during the 1940s. The fact that the AC] was born of a broad fear ofJewish nationalism, rather than merely the narrower issue of the future of Palestine, provides an important clue to the motives of those who joined its ranks. If AC] president Lessing Rosenwald perceived Zionism as a "retreat from emancipation," and if the Council's executive director, Elmer Berger, reacted to the sight of a Zionist rally by calling it "segregation in action," it seems evident that they regarded Zionism as an impediment to the Book Reviews 111 assimilation of Jews into American society. Kolsky tends to overlook this factor, choosing instead,to portray the motives of ACJ activists in more flattering terms. "The ACJ indeed represented a differentJewish viewpoint, but its members did not deny theirJewishness," he writes. He should have paid closer attention to the charge by Rabbi Louis Wolsey, one of the founders of the AC}, that by 1944 the Council had become "a refuge for atheistic and un-Jewish Jews who joined because they looked upon theAC} as an instrument for assimilation."1 Could it be that for some ACJ members , anti-Zionism was indeed a way of "denying their Jewishness" ...? Kolsky's research is further marred by his tendency to take sides. In these pages, the arguments put forward by leaders of the AC} are wrapped in adjectives such as "exceptionally frank," "perceptive," and "ingenious." The anti-Zionists, according to Kolsky, were "reasonable" in tone and idealistic in their beliefs, promoted an ideology that was deeply rooted in AmericanJewish thought, and ended up as scorned "prophets" rather than political victors solely because of "bad timing"-that is, the proximity of the Holocaust to the public debate over Zionism. Kolsky depicts American Zionists, by contrast, as hysterical, mud-slinging bullies whose arguments were "emotional, unsubstantiated polemical overstatements," and whose political triumph in the American Jewish community was due solely to their crafty exploitation of the Holocaust. This is the underlying theme of Jews Against Zionism. American Zionists did work energetically to counter the activities of the AC}, but Kolsky exaggerates both the scope and impact ofwhat he has unflatteringly dubbed "the Zionist juggernaut." For example, Kolsky attributes the failure of German-born New York Jews to join the ACJ to the fact that those Jews were "extremely sensitive to Zionist pressures." Was that really the only reason for their rejection of the Council? At another point, while describing the gradual withdrawal from the AC} of many of the Reform rabbis who were its original...