Auerbach shows how the Ochs-Sulzberger New York Times and the Reform Movement -- led by anti-Zionist zealots like Judah Magnes and groups like the
American Council for Judaism -- formed a kind of interlocking directorate that turned a cold shoulder to Jews coming under Nazi rule.
Figures such as Kaufmann Kohler, rector of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and the
American Council for Judaism were particularly vocal in their anti-Zionists sentiments.
Launched in 1951 under the leadership of the celebrity journalist Dorothy Thompson, AFME worked to foster American support for Arab nationalists such as Abdel-Nasser and counter the growing power of the so-called "Israel Lobby." Also linked to the CIA was the
American Council for Judaism, an organization of anti-Zionist Jews led by Roosevelt's close friend, Rabbi Elmer Berger.
This group included anti-Zionist Jews from the
American council for Judaism, who, Wilford writes, "questioned Zionism's insistence on a distinct Jewish national identity, seeing it as a denial of their Americanism and an invitation to persecution by anti-Semites."
The headline is misleading: Rabbi Berger, a long-time leader of the
American Council for Judaism and for many years America's most prominent Jewish critic of Zionism, was not "against Israel." Instead, he rejected the Zionist philosophy, which holds that Jews are an ethnic group whose "homeland" is Israel and those living outside of that state are "in exile."
He also attacked the Lobby (AIPAC), over which he seems to prefer the moderate Jewish lobby group J Street, the Peace Now group, and the
American Council for Judaism, which is opposed to Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish homeland.
The state was a stronghold of the anti-Zionist
American Council for Judaism, but Jews supported Israel philanthropically.
Calling the
American Council for Judaism (ACJ) "the most effective anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli force on the American scene," efforts were made to give them "much more attention....than in the past."
* A profile of the
American Council for Judaism, which urges the separation of church and statechurch being the synagogue and the state being Israel.
True, during the war and immediately after, Zionists and anti-Zionists in the Reform rabbinate and laity continued to battle furiously over such issues as support for a Jewish army in Palestine, the establishment of the (anti-Zionist)
American Council for Judaism, and the participation of the movement's lay organization, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), in the American Jewish Conference, a wartime umbrella organization for Zionist leadership.
Israel Shahak's vision can perhaps best be found in his books Jewish History, Jewish Religion (Pluto Press, 1994), and Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel (Pluto Press, 1994), written with Norton Mezvinsky, a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University and formerly a member of the staff of the
American Council for Judaism.
Baum, "Zionist Influence on American Higher Education," Issues,
American Council for Judaism, Autumn 1965; A Program Manual for Zionism on the Campus, Student Zionist Organization, New York, 1963; Lawrence Mosher, "Zionist Role in US Raises New Concern," National Observer, May 18, 1970.