City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement by Sara Yael Hirschhorn (review)

In City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement, Sara Yael Hirschhorn explores the history of American Jewish involvement in the Israeli settler enterprise and the ideological motivations that compelled scores of American Jews to leave their homeland in the West to live out their vision of Zionism beyond the Green Line. According to Hirschhorn, the latter were inspired not only by biblical imperatives to live in the whole of the land of Israel but also by a deeply and uniquely American discourse of pioneering. Fueled by romantic idealism and American liberalism, the American Jewish settlers sought to build "utopian, suburbanized communities in the occupied territories that would serve as a kind of 'city on a hill(top)' to both Israel and the United States" (20).

Yet in fulfilling their Jewish destinies, Hirschhorn argues, many American Jews faced cognitive dissonance inherent in the confrontation between their American liberal identities and the realities on the ground in the occupied territories. Indeed, the central theme of Hirschhorn's work is the clash between the American Jewish settlers' liberal personas and their illiberal project. By analyzing how this group applies liberal ideas to illiberal programs and mobilizes the language of the Left to realize the ambitions of the ultranationalist Right, Hirschhorn challenges conventional political paradigms and offers a fresh perspective on this ideological project (20).

Chapter 1 focuses on the United States of the 1960s and explores how political change at home affected American Jewry against the backdrop of collective Holocaust reckoning. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 provide an in-depth view of the American-Israeli settlements of Yamit, Efrat, and Tekoa and examine the shifting alliances of these settlements vis-à-vis the Israeli government, the native Israeli settler movement, and the Palestinians over the past five decades. Hirschhorn also traces the radicalization of this cohort as Israel's political spectrum itself has slowly shifted rightward. Chapter 5 explores the evolving role of American Jewish immigrants in the Israeli settler enterprise since the 1990s, focusing on the divergent roles of this constituency and the broader clash between liberal values and settler realities that have helped determine these disparate paths (16).

Hirschhorn's compelling academic study is written in elegant and accessible prose. She strikes a fine balance in her work between providing scholars with valuable and new material while also reaching across philosophical and disciplinary boundaries to engage a wide audience. While Hirschhorn assumes some knowledge of events and terminology related to her topic, the context she provides assists readers unfamiliar with modern Israeli history in making their way through the work with relative ease. Weaving together materials from archives, periodicals, media, literature, film, music, internet resources, and oral histories, Hirschhorn infuses an already lively topic with a personal touch. At its core, the work puts under the microscope a provocative subject that ought to be discussed by society at large. Despite her best efforts to provide an objective, rigorous, scholarly account, Hirschhorn acknowledges that some readers will view her work as "a spirited defense of the settler enterprise, while others will view it as a vitriolic condemnation of the entire Zionist proposition" (11). In the final analysis, however, once readers push past the inevitable kneejerk reactions to this divisive topic, they will be rewarded with and enriched by Hirschhorn's thoughtful and scholarly insight and will be better able to engage constructively with ongoing questions about the merits and limitations of contemporary Zionism.