[HANASHIR:11356] Re: Reform Zionism

[Shirona <shirona...>]

Thank you Sholom, Steve, Jeff, Adrian - this thread has been so
educational - and for me - important to learn about.

One thing is sadly clear. We need not worry about other people trying to
destroy us.  Left to our own devices - we'll do the job ourselves.

Shirona
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Singer, Songwriter and Teacher of Jewish Music
 Visit my website at    www.shirona.com
Listen to my music at www.mp3.com/shirona
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sholom Simon" <sholom (at) aishdas(dot)org>
To: <hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 1:56 PM
Subject: [HANASHIR:11355] Re: Reform Zionism


Hoo boy.  What do we do if we are interested in digging around for the
"truth" (realizing that that is a particularly tough thing to ascertain),
but in the process of finding it, we run into some distasteful things in
our own past?

I am not championing any opinion, and didn't start this thread, but in an
effort to correct what I think are mischaracterizations of history, I am
responding.  If you aren't interested in reading uncomfortable stuff that
is not related to music, please delete now.

1.  Reform and Anti-Zionism

Adrian wrote:

>OK, here's the story_reform was never anti-Zionist. Perhaps "a-zionist"
>would say it better. And that perspective changed over time, By the
Columbus
>platform in 1937, the viewpoint had shifted. Yes, the '67 war gave renewed
>vigor to support for Israel among all Diaspora Jews. But it was not a
>turning point in overall Reform philosophy towards Zionism.

I thank Adrian for his quoting from the Platforms (primary sources!).

But I beg to differ on his interpretation.  The Pittsburgh platform (1885),
as I read it, is polite, but anti-zionist nonetheless.

"We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and
therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship
under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning
the Jewish state."

Indeed, just a 14 years later, the CCAR emphasized this by adopting a
resolution disapproving of any attempt to establish a Jewish state. The
resolution declared: "Zion was a precious possession of the past.as such it
is a holy memory, but it is not our hope of the future. America is our
Zion."

In 1922 Rabbi Louis Grossman, the president of the CCAR, reacted to the
Balfour Declaration (!) by reaffirming the standard Reform viewpoint and by
reiterating Reform's opposition to the "idea that Palestine should be
considered the homeland of the Jews," because Jews in the United States
were an integral part of the American Nation.

Julian Morgenstern was a committed anti-Zionist, and president of HUC until
1947.

However, the winds of change started taking place in the 1930's.

The Columbus Platform (1937) was a great change.  But, if I remember
correctly (this is the one sentence in this entire post that I am a little
bit unsure of), the section on Israel passed by a *single vote*, due to the
immense, intense, lobbying by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver and others.

As for HUC, Nelson Glueck a committed Zionist succeeded Morgenstern in
1947, and it was his initiative, that all rabbinical candidates were
required to spend a year in the Jerusalem.

2.  Rabbi Steven Wise

This information is even more dicomforting.

>Reform Jews can be very proud indeed of Rabbi Wise, who was an advisor to
>President Roosevelt (and who urged the President to bomb the German
>railroads, a plea that went unheeded).

Wise also withheld information about atrocities, too.

It is well known that he was privy to information, upon reciept of a cable,
that Nazis were systematically exterminating Jews, in August of 1942.  The
State Department asked Wise to keep quiet about it until they could verify
it.  This took four months, until December, all the while, Wise not saying
anything, even though some reports were already appearing in newspapers
before then.

>From another article:

"In November 1942, a small article appeared on the inside pages of some
American newspapers that revealed that two million Jews had already been
exterminated by the Nazis.  Bergson was most upset that the American Jewish
establishment, whose chief spokesman was Rabbi Stephen Wise, head of the
American Jewish Congress, was not doing enough to save the Jews in Europe.
>From that time on, Bergson dedicated all his efforts to try to garner
support to save the Jews of Europe.

"One of his more audacious plans saw him recruit some 400 Orthodox rabbis
from around the country who descended on Washington, D.C., two days before
Yom Kippur 1943 to protest the indifference of the Roosevelt administration
to the devastating plight of European Jewry. Bergson had indicated that he
invited many clergy people of all different faiths to participate, but only
the rabbis came.  While Vice President Wallace interrupted the U.S. Senate
session and led some legislators to the Capitol steps to greet the rabbinic
protestors, FDR's Jewish advisors convinced him that these Orthodox rabbis
were not representative of the American Jewish community or its leadership,
and Roosevelt therefore did not receive the delegation.  Ultimately, this
particular march helped force Congress to conduct its first hearings on the
worsening situation of European Jewry and eventually contributed to the
creation of the government's rescue agency, The War Refugee Board, which
was established in January 1944."

Steven Wise was one of those FDR advisors who argued against meeting with
the rabbis, deriding the marchers as "not rabbis but residents of old age
homes."


+-------------------------------------------------------+
|   Sholom Simon     | sholom (at) aishdas(dot)org               |
+-------------------------------------------------------+
| proud daddy to Joshua Ari  4/18/93 - 27 Nissan 5753   |
|        and Eliana Rebekah  3/12/95 - 11 Adar-2 5755   |
+-------------------------------------------------------+

------------------------ hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org -----------------------+