New Approaches to Intergroup Zionist Relations in the Americas

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

This panel investigates intergroup Zionist relations in North and South America during the twentieth-century. Each paper challenges conventional narratives about Jewish Zionism by examining how relations with non-Jews, including Irish nationalists, the Argentine left, and American evangelical Protestants, transformed Jewish Zionist political aims. An examination of intergroup relations underscores each scholar’s presentation, illustrating how Jewish Zionists’ emulation of or alignment with non-Jews, even if only temporarily, resulted in the bridging of ideological, religious, and cultural differences.

The paper presented by Judah Bernstein examines why Irish nationalism served as an attractive model of ethnic nationalism that one segment of American Jewish Zionists looked to imitate. Bernstein argues that Irish nationalists created a narrative of exile and redemption that conformed to American Zionist ideals about diaspora and homeland, yet lacked antisemitic overtones present in other forms of European nationalism. Geopolitical events, however, including the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 confounded the linkages between Jewish Zionists and Irish nationalists. Adriana Brodsky’s paper investigates the 1972 establishment of Juventud Sionista Socialista (Zionist Socialist Youth) in Argentina. Brodsky explores how the Jewish members of this new youth group looked to demonstrate the compatibility of Zionism with socialism, in an attempt to situate themselves within the larger Latin American political fights against capitalism and imperialism. This second paper therefore examines intergroup relations to illustrate how Jewish Zionists worked within the Argentine left to affect political change while still viewing their future in Israel. Amy Weiss’ paper analyzes the rise of evangelical Protestant and Zionist relations in the United States in the late twentieth-century. Using the American Jewish Committee’s 1977 presentation of its inaugural National Interreligious Award to evangelist Billy Graham as a point of departure, Weiss reveals how Jewish Zionists along with pro-Israel Jewish organizations sought out interfaith alliances to affect American-Israeli relations.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish History in the Americas

Chair

• Zohar Segev, University of Haifa

Individual Presentations

• “The Two Finest Nations in the World”: American Zionists and Irish Nationalism, 1897-1922" - Judah Mark Bernstein, NYU

• Bridging Worlds: Zionist Youth Groups, and the National Liberation Struggles of the 1960s-1970s in Argentina and Latin America - Adriana Brodsky, St. Mary's College of Maryland

• Billy Graham Receives the Ten Commandments: The American Jewish Committee’s National Interreligious Award and American Evangelical and Jewish Zionist Relations - Amy Weiss, The City College of New York, CUNY