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ENVISIONING ISRAEL the CHANGING IDEALS and IMAGES of NORTH AMERICAN JEWS a Projection of Amercia As It Ought to Be: Zion in Hie Mind's Eye of American Jews

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ENVISIONING ISRAEL the CHANGING IDEALS and IMAGES of NORTH AMERICAN JEWS a Projection of Amercia As It Ought to Be: Zion in Hie Mind's Eye of American Jews ..... _-_ ..... __ ... wmw d.M.ttdrSrrr ENVISIONING ISRAEL THE CHANGING IDEALS AND IMAGES OF NORTH AMERICAN JEWS A Projection of Amercia as It Ought to Be: Zion in Hie Mind's Eye of American Jews Jonathan D. Sarna Let me begin with a bold thesis. The Israel of American Jews - the Zion that they imagined in their minds, dreamed about, and wrote about - was for centuries a mythical Zion, a Zion that reveals more Edited by about American Jewish ideals than about the realities of Eretz Israel. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American Jews ALLONGAL depicted Israel as a "holy~' land, a land where desperately poor and scrupulously faithful Jews engaged in prayer and study; a land, in short, where the material life, values, and practices of Jews were precisely the reverse of American Jews' own. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alongside this traditional image, a new one arose: the image of the romantic pioneer. the hard-working agricultural colonist, the brawny Jewish farmer - the answer. in other words, to those who claimed that Jews were mere parasites, racially incapable of "productive" labor. Finally. in the second decade of the twentieth century, Zionists like Louis D. Brandeis added a further twist to this image: Zion became for them a utopian extension of the American dream. a Jewish refuge where freedom. liberty. and social justice would reign supreme. an "outpost of democracy" that American Jews could legitimately, proudly, and patriotically champion., , , All of these images, whatever truth they may have contained, took on mythic proportions in America. They embodied American Jews' ~ yearnings and dreams. responded to their psychological, political. and emotional needs, and helped them to counter the malicious slurs THE MAGNES PRESS, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY, JERUSALEM of their enemies. The Zion of the American Jewish imagination, in WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, DETROIT I C1Ofr, 42 JONATHAN D. SARNA ZION IN THE MIND'S EYE OF AMERICAN JEWS 43 short, became something of a fantasy land: a seductive heaven­ which our brethren have suffered in the holy city of Zaphet [Safed] on-earth, where enemies were vanquished, guilt assuaged, hopes caused by the earthquake." He reported that both the synagogues realized, and deeply felt longings satisfied. I and the house of study had been damaged, that many houses were This essay examines these historic American Jewish images of totally destroyed, their owners losing all they possessed, and that Zion in greater detail. It argues that such images developed from 160 people had perished in the ruins. He begged the "illustrious _ and addressed - the needs of American Jewry and were, as a gentlemen" of the Jewish community of New York for "prompt result, increasingly out of touch with reality back in Eretz Israel. and liberal relief to alleviate the disaster which brought such terrible Over time, this "Israel of American Jews" became more and more of misfortune and unspeakable distress, a calamity from which God an idealized dream world - no more realizable than the starry-eyed may deliver us and never again permit to befall children of Israel." visions of a goldene medina that some Jewish immigrants to America Haham Modai's letter was one of numerous appeals sent to the brought with them when they sailed to Ellis Island. This in no way congregation through the years on behalf of suffering Holy Land of course diminishes the significance of these dreams; for like all Jews, and it encapsulated in its language the central images that Jews such dreams they reveal much about the mind of the dreamers - in Early America already associated with their brethren in Zion: the in our case American Jews. The dreams also took on a life of their idea that in this case, Safed, was a "poor Kehila [community]," a own, influencing culture, philanthropy, and politics. "holy and suffering Kehila," and a "Kehila" whose leaders were It is impossible in the space allotted to me to deal with all of these deeply committed to "the continuous study of the Holy Law." To themes. I confine myself, therefore, to three little-known but I think assist such a worthy community, Modai reminded American Jews, revealing documents, each from a different century, that shed light was a "mitzvah," and as such, contributions benefited donors no on the image of Zion as it developed in America prior to 1948. less than recipients. "I trust to Divine Grace," he concluded, ..... that by your acts, Omnipotent God may redeem us from our bitter and prolonged captivity, and that He may bless you, prosper and increase I you.,,2 The Land of Israel, in Haham Modai's day and into the early Let us turn first to a document from 1761. Early in that year, the decades of the nineteenth century, was sparsely settled. It held a leaders of New York's Congregation Shearith Israel received an population of about 300,000, not more than 5,000 of whom were unusual letter in Spanish from "the very Reverent Haham Haim Jews. Disease and poverty were rampant, violence was omnipresent, Mudahy [Modai]." Raised in th Holy City of Safed and later a and as a modern historian puts it, "the country displayed all the member of the Jewish court (bet din) of Constantinople, Modai characteristics of a neglected province of a disintegrating empire:' was a distinguished Sephardic scholar. He was also an experienced the Ottoman empire.3 Such was the real Israel, which to my knowl­ emissary of the Jews of Safed, having traveled to Europe in 1749 edge not a single American Jew of those days had ever seen. The to collect funds for his impoverished community. Now he was Israel in the mind of early American Jews, in contrast, was an again representing the Jews of Safed, for they had just experienced imagined Israel- a land of troubles, to be sure, but still a holy land, a devastating earthquake (30 October, 1759) and urgently needed money to rebuild. 2 Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 27 (1920) 18-20; on In his letter Modai described "the great misfortune and calamity Modai, see Encyclopaedia Judaica. s.v. I find no evidence to support the claim that Modai actually visited New York, as maintained by David de Sola Pool, "Early Relations between Palestine and American Jewry," in The Brandeis In these paragraphs, I have drawn upon my earlier remarks on this subject in Avukah Annual of 1932, ed. 'Joseph S. Shubow (Boston; Avukah, 1932),537. Commentary, February 1988,64-65. 3 H. Z. Hirschberg, Encyclopaedia Judaica. s.v. "Israel, Land of," Col. 293. 44 JONATHAN D. SARNA ZION IN THE MIND'S EYE OF AMERICAN JEWS 45 a land where in the midst of suffering and poverty Jews studied and site of the temple and said, "the time will come - the day will prayed, and a land to which, in God's good time, all Jews would be be accomplished." restored. Here ... in this free and happy country, distinctions in religion Emissaries (meshulahim) collecting funds for the Jews of the Holy are unknown; here we enjoy liberty without licentiousness and Land ·visited America's shores every few years from 1759 onward, land without oppression.6 supplementing the appeals from scholars ~ike Ha?am Modai. ~hat arrived by letter. Some, like Haham HaYlm Cangal, who vlsl~ed America and Israel, according to these exaggerated conceptions, the American colonies in 1772-1773, developed a network of Jewish were polar opposites. Where American Jews cultivated commerce, and Christian friends and won wide respect; others failed miserably.4 neglected Jewish learning, evinced considerable laxity in their reli­ Whether successful or not, however, itinerants tended to reinforce gious behavior, and enjoyed liberty and freedom, the Jews of Eretz Israel wallowed in poverty, suffered brutal oppression, devoted the image of the Holy Land as radically other, altogether ~iffere~t from Jewish life as lived in the New World, and practically Its themselves to Jewish learning, and remained completely scrupu­ antithesis. "You, protected by the liberal constitution of America, lous in their religious observances. America, in this binary scheme, living in freedom, opulence and prosperity: turn your eyes to the represented modernity's lures and perils, While Israel symbolized horrible state of slavery and misery, under which our brethren are tradition and suffering with the promise of redemption. Each nev­ weeping in the Holy Land! and your compassionate heart.s will be ertheless needed the other, and as a result the two communities deeply affected," a typical fundraising epistle read, in this ~ase a (like the Diaspora and Israel generally) developed a genuine sense letter of 1838 seeking funds from the Jews of Charleston. The of interdependence: material sustenance flowed in one direction, American Jewish leader Mordecai Noah, in his 1825 address at the spiritual sustenance in the other. Again, it was Mordecai Noah who best articulated this symbiotic relationship, this time in his address laying of the cornerstone of Ararat, his a~ortive Jewish c?l~ny .near Grand Island, New York, underscored this same sharp dlstmctlOn: at Shearith Israel on Thanksgiving Day, 1848, on behalf of Rabbi Jechiel Ha-Cohen's mission 7 seeking funds to enlarge a Jerusalem They are the great sentinels and guardians of the law and synagogue: religion and amidst the severest privations. and the most int~nse sufferings, they have for centuries kept thetr eye upon the rumed It has been said that the Jews at Jerusalem are indolent, are disinclined to labor, are only employed in studying the law, and devoting all their hours to prayer, and prefer leading a life 4· Pool "Palestine and American Jewry," 536-548; Hyman B.
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