Religion: Two Kinds of Jews

Blow the great trumpet for our freedom and raise the banner for the ingathering of the exiles and gather us together from the four corners of the earth, and may our eyes behold the return to Zion in mercy.

Three times each day for the last 2,000 years, pious Jews standing in prayer have repeated these words. When Zionism made the “ingathering” a present political reality, the sound of the trumpets was often mixed with the sound of discord in Judaism. A major, though usually muffled conflict is taking place between the Jews of the U.S., who have supported the new state to the tune of over $100 million a year, and the Jews of Israel. Last week the conflict was audible in Jerusalem.

Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion and others once looked forward to a stream of Jews from the U.S. who would pour into Israel to help the unskilled immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa build the new country with their American know-how. But even zealous Zionists in the U.S. tended to send money instead—and many felt that their contributions entitled them to a say in Israel’s affairs.

Rights & Duties. Ben-Gurion did not see it so. “There can be no rights without duties,” he told the 1951 Zionist Congress. “What is a Zionist and what is simply a Jew wishing to assist the state? A Zionist must come to Israel himself as an immigrant. Today’s Zionists have not met their test.”

The leader of Zionism outside Israel fought back. He is Nahum Goldmann. 63, president of the World Zionist Organization and second only to Ben-Gurion in prestige among the world’s Jews. Like B.-G.. he is noted for a percussion-cap temper and for scholarship (he reads 15 books a week, mostly on philosophy, astronomy, history and religious mysticism). Though Goldmann agrees that eventually all Jews should migrate to fsrael, he advocates a go-slow policy and feels that U.S. Jews deserve more recognition for their help (he even suggested that an observer from the World Zionist Organization sit in on Israeli Cabinet meetings, was flatly turned down by Premier Ben-Gurion).

Last week Ben-Gurion deepened the gulf with a speech before a Jerusalem meeting convened to discuss the ideology of Zionism. Some 70 writers and thinkers from all over the world gasped audibly when Ben-Gurion announced: “The difference between Goldmann and me is that he is a Zionist and I am not. There seems to be general agreement that a Jew can live in America, speak and read English and bring up his children in American culture and still call himself a Zionist. If that is Zionism, I want no part of it.”

Partnership & Pride. Then Nahum Goldmann rose to plead with Ben-Gurion for some kind of formal working partnership between the Jews of Israel and Jews in other countries before it is too late and both die spiritually. Failure of this partnership would be calamitous for Israel and catastrophic for the Jews of the Diaspora. “Israel must counteract by its existence the silent process of assimilation. What made Eastern Jewry so powerful and creative was not its theoretical adherence to Jewish religion and Jewish culture but the fact that it had implemented the Talmud in its daily life. Such reality of ideas can now be provided to Diaspora Jewry only by Israel. Rabbis may preach the theory of the chosen people and believe in it, but the Jewish member of an American golf club does not believe in it. If Jewish people in the Diaspora cannot find a new source of pride and self-respect, they will collapse psychologically. That is where Israel comes in. But it is dependent upon real partnership.”

At week’s end Ben-Gurion was silent, evidently in no mood for partnership.