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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zoob Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 GREENSTEIN, Howard Robert, 1935- THE CHANGING ATTITUDES TOWARD ZIONISM IN REFORM JUDAISM, 1937-1948. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1973 History, general University Microfilms, A XEROX Company , Ann Arbor, Michigan 0 1974 HOWARD ROBERT GREENSTEIN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE CHANGING ATTITUDES TOWARD ZIONISM IN REFORM JUDAISM, 1937-19^8 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Howard R0 Greenstein# B.A., A»M0 The Ohio State University 1973 Reading Committeei Approved By Robert Chazan Hare Raphael Bradley Chapin Advist Department of History VITA August 22, 1935 , e . Born - Providence, Rhode Island 1957.............. B, A,, Cornell University, Ithaca. New York 1962 eeeeeeoe MeA«, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio 1973 . Adjunct Professor, Department of Sociology, Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, Florida FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Jewish History Studies in Sociology, Professor John Quarantelli Studies In American History. Professor Mary Young ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page VITA ........................................ li INTRODUCTION ................... 1 Chapter THE PRELUDE TO THE COLUMBUS PLATFORM , . 1U THE JEWISH ARMY CONTROVERSY AND THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL FOR J U D A I S M ........ 57 THE HOUSTON CONTROVERSY................... 89 ADVOCATES AND ADVERSARIES: THE INNER CONFLICT OVER ZIONISM. ...... 125 DEBATE OVER THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONFERENCE.................... 175 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS .................. 219 NOTES. ............................ 230 MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS AND UNPUBLISHED MATERIALS NEWSPAPERS PERIODICALS OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS BOOKS AND PHAMPHLETS ARTICLES UNPUBLISHED THESES AND DISSERTATIONS APPENDIX A......... 283 B. ................................... 288 C................................... 290 Du . a.«.0..oo.a...(o..a.u 291 iii INTRODUCTION The conflict between Zionism and Reform Judaism actually originated in the aftermath of the Rrench Revolution. The ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity shattered the foundations of autocracies which had existed in Europe for centuries. With the Declaration of the Rights of Man, thousands of Jews envisioned the imminent arrival of the Messianic Age and actively solicited support for a program of Liberal Judaism which would divest Jewish life of its parochial features and emphasize instead those moral principles on which all men could and inevitably would unite. They proclaimed an abiding faith in the redemption of the Jewish people and all peoples through the democratic process, and they lived by that faith. Many of them even believed that Judaism properly conceived and practiced, would eventually destroy itself, because a world of peace and harmony would no longer require the Jewish people as the special envoys of moral truth. The early leaders of Reform Judaism in Germany and later in America were not only liberals intellectually. They were firm believers in the political Messianism whi.eh proclaimed the is'inl- nent brotherhood of all men. They joined their politic- 1 liberal" ism to their spiritual liberalism and declared that Reform Judaism 1 was not only a religion for the liberated mind of the new day,, but that it was now and forever anti-nationalist. Whereas traditional Judaism had temporarily suspended all laws depending upon residence in Israel for their fulfillments Reform completely abrogated them. It rejected all laws pertaining to the priests and Levites and declared instead that all Jews were a "kingdom of priests and a holy people1' and that the obligations for moral purity applied to every Jew with equal responsibility. The Reform prayerbook eliminated references to "Galut" {Exile) or to a Messiah who would miraculously restore world Jewry to the land of Israel and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. It eliminated all prayers referring to "Shivat Zion” (a return to Zion)» since Reform Judaism insisted that the mission of Judaism required the active participation of Jews in all lands, of the Diaspora. They regarded the nationalist period of Jewish life as only a temporary stage in the evolutionary development of Judaism which existed only to prepare the Jewish people for the opportunity of service to all mankind. At the time of the Pittsburgh Platform in 1885j Reform Judaism could have or had already become the religion of the majority of American Jews. The climate of social liberalism and the birth of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism made Reform Judaism and its emphasis on prophetic moralities extremely palatable to large numbers of Jews who welcomed as 3 few differences as possible between them and their non-Jewish neighbors., By the end of the 19th Century, the majority of congregations in the United States were in fact affiliated with the national synagogue body of Reform Judaism, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC)o When the tide of Jewish immigration to America shifted from its source in Germany to sources in Eastern Europe, the Reform movement began to suffer from a numerical decline. East European immigrants at first did not join, and certainly did not establish any Reform Temples. It was not the liberalism of the Reform Synagogue which discouraged them. Many of them were extremely daring in their political and social ideologies and would have found considerable reinforcement in Reform synagogues. YJhat alienated them from Reform Judaism more than anything else was its repudiation of Jewish nationhood. The immigrants from Eastern Europe had been oppressed as a people and uprooted as a people, regardless of their religious beliefs. Experience had taught them that what really mattered was not how they wor shipped, but who they were. Their experience would not permit them to deny their identity as a people, and they were convinced that those who did deny that reality were either fools or dreamers. These new immigrants were not all Jewish Nationalists, but all of them acknowledged the reality and the primacy of Jewish people- hood. Jewish Nationalists did not share the enthusiasm of Reform Jews for the promise of the Emancipation# The prospect of complete freedom for the Jew, in their estimation, was and remained a Messianic hope and not a reality# The oppression, persecution and suffering, which they had endured, convinced them that ordinary safeguards for human liberty did not include Jews* The only assurance of creative Jewish survival, they claimed, rested on the principle of self-determination for the Jewish people# Only if the Jewish people enjoyed the same condi tions of sovereignty and independence as other people, only if they could achieve a "normal" existence, could they expect to live fully as free men# Such conditions required a nation of their own# Any other arrangement was a hopeless enterprise, doomed to inevitable disaster# The emergence of modem Zionism under the leadership of Theodore Herzl began with this proposi tion as its promise# For fifty years following the first Basel Conference, the Zionist movement labored to achieve the fulfill ment of its dream, the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Palestine# Zionism elicited substantial support in lands where the problem of Jewish "horaelessness" was an oppressive reality0 The Jews of Eastern Europe, who suffered repeated waves of persecu tion under Polish and Russian monarchs, appreciated the implica tions of Herzl0s analysis for their own safety and security# The