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Introduction:
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Introduction: Like All the Nations? MOSES RISCHIN For the Jewish people, no high end will ever justify low means. We have been nurtured too long in the rabbinic tradition for that. Judah L. Magnes In his last twenty years, the most enigmatic, original, and controversial figure in American Jewish life in the first half of the twentieth century spent his best energies confronting the Arab-Jewish dilemma. In April 1948, desperate to defuse a seemingly endless civil war between the Arab and Jewish Palestines proclaimed in the United Nations partition proposal, the ailing President of the Hebrew University flew from Jerusalem to New York on what proved to be his last peace mission . He failed, of course. Five months later, while preparing a design for a United States of Palestine, an Arab-Jewish confederation of two independent nations, one of California'S, America's, and Israel's most distinguished sons died in near oblivion. No one had labored more ardently and more selflessly in the cause of peace in the Middle East than had "the loneliest voice among the Jews:'l Ignored by Arabs, barely recognized by the British mandatory power, and grimly tolerated by his beleagured fellow Jews, Judah Magnes had been sustained in his efforts by a small circle of dedicated idealists represented most notably by Martin Buber, the universally renowned Jewish philosopher and theologian.2 In the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, when six million of their number were expendable, Jews, of all peoples, had no reason to be trusting. A Jewish state had become an unequivocal necessity. Even Magnes, for whom survival was never enough, after calling upon Chaim Weizmann on May 15, 1948, to congratulate the presidentdesignate on the proclamation of the State of Israel, confided to one 1 2 INTRODUCTION: LIKE ALL THE NATIONS of his sons who accompanied him, "Do you think that in my heart I am not glad too that there is a state? I just did not think that it was to be:'3 Neither did Weizmann, in quite the way it came about. A year earlier, Weizmann had insisted that it was not a matter of right and wrong, but a matter of the greater or lesser injustice - that "moral force" alone must prevail if Zion is to be "redeemed in justice:' Better than anyone, the dying Magnes knew that "The Arab Question" would continue to be, as Arthur Goren has phrased it, "the touchstone of the moral integrity of Zionism:'4 More than three decades later, in the summer of 1982 when "the moral integrity of Zionism" was put to the test, as it never quite had been before, Magnes would not have found it wanting. Israel's "sixth war;' precipitated an unprecedented moral crisis and debate over Jewish values and ideology and divided the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the United States as they had never been divided during Israel's five earlier wars for survival. "The world expects more of Israel;' announced Magnes's unknowing disciples in public forum and newspaper proclamation . "The very criticism of Israel demonstrates international faith in Israel's high moral standing;'5 added his latter-day surrogates. In the midst of a war that went beyond the legitimation of "Peace for Galilee;' tens of thousands of Israelis on the streets and plazas of Tel Aviv demonstrated their displeasure with their government. Their government listened and, in a spirit of civil courage, rare at any time in all but a few nations of the world, responded in no uncertain terms. By coincidence, a few months earlier, Harvard University Press published a landmark collection of 140 brilliantly selected documents, primarily drawn from the vast Judah Magnes archive in Jerusalem, and masterfully edited and introduced by Arthur Goren of the Hebrew University. Reclaiming "a virtual nonperson to modern Zionist scholarship;'6 Dissenter in Zion: From the Writings of Judah L. Magnes at last made public the private record of the mind and soul of a pioneer figure in the development of Jewish religious life and thought in the twentieth century, a record studded with the provocative and intimate reflections of one to whom the life of the spirit expressed in words was as sacred almost as life itself. Clearly Magnes's journal entries, notes, letters, and speeches testify to the transcendent power of an historic voice that speaks for our time, as it did for his, with undiminished vitality and urgency. "... [h]e had exceptional powers of analyzing his...