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Rabbi Balfour Brickner, Interreligious Dialogue, and the Ironies of Liberal Zionism in America, 1967‒1980
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2022
Abstract
After the June 1967 Middle East war, liberal Zionism in the United States was transformed from an assumption into an embattled claim. From the 1940s to the 1960s, most Americans had assumed that liberalism and Zionism went together naturally. Only under pressure of criticism did liberal Zionists emerge as a self-aware faction within American Zionism. Starting in 1967, among the first to question the assumption of liberal Zionism were progressive Protestants, and fissures around Zionism among American progressives appeared in interreligious dialogue between Reform Jews and liberal white Protestants. Rabbi Balfour Brickner, a leading liberal Reform rabbi and a key interlocutor for such Protestants, stood in the thick of this dialogue, and his negotiation of liberal Zionism's passage from assumption to claim reveals that transformation vividly.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with the British Association for American Studies
References
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6 James A. Sleeper and Alan L. Mintz, eds., The New Jews (New York: Vintage, 1971); Jack Nusan Porter and Peter Dreier, eds., Jewish Radicalism: A Selected Anthology (New York: Grove Press, 1973); Lutz Fiedler, Matzpen: A History of Israeli Dissidence, trans. Jake Schneider (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020); Doug Rossinow, “ʻThe 1900-Year Crisis: Arthur Waskow, The Question of Israel/Palestine, and the Effort to Form a Jewish Religious Left in America, 1967‒1974,” in Leilah Danielson, Marian Mollin, and Doug Rossinow, eds., The Religious Left in Modern America: Doorkeepers of a Radical Faith (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 237‒38; Weber, Timothy P., On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004)Google Scholar; Hummel, Daniel G., Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.‒Israeli Relations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)Google Scholar.
7 Jo-ann Price, “Balfour Brickner: ‘When a Church Starts to Do Its Job … People Dislike It,’” National Catholic Reporter, 18 Oct. 1967, 2; “Why We Went” (letter), Christian Century, 26 Aug. 1964, 1061‒62; Mitchell K. Hall, Because of Their Faith: CALCAV and Religious Opposition to the Vietnam War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). On the Balfour Declaration see Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab–Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents, 10th edn (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2021), 63–69.
8 Balfour Brickner, “My Zionist Dilemmas, Twenty Years Later,” Sh'ma, 13 April 1990, 89; Brickner, “The Emerging Pattern of the Jewish Community,” delivered at Union of American Hebrew Congregations staff meeting, 16 June 1966, 3, nearprint box, Balfour Brickner Papers (hereafter BBP) (American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati). On the gendered quality of conservative Jewish intellectual and political life in this era see, for context, Ronnie A. Grinberg, “Neither ‘Sissy’ Boy nor Patrician Man: New York Intellectuals and the Construction of American Jewish Masculinity,” American Jewish History, 98, 3 (July 2014), 127–51; as well as Lila Corwin Berman, Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
9 Hummel's work superbly chronicles the divergent work of Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum to forge pro-Israel connections with Christian conservatives in this period. Hummel, chapters 4, 6. On the Reform context see Polish, David, Renew Our Days: The Zionist Issue in Reform Judaism (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1976)Google Scholar; Meyer, Michael A., Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.
10 Balfour Brickner, “My Zionist Dilemmas: Two Recent Cases,” Sh'ma, 9 Nov. 1970, 3–5; Brickner, “Credo of a Dove Zionist,” Worldview, July‒Aug. 1976, 4–8; “Issues confronting Jews Today: an outline of material geared specifically for a Christian audience,” 3 Dec. 1974, Folder 2, Box 7, BBP.
11 Henry Sloane Coffin, “Perils to America in the New Jewish State,” C&C, 21 Feb. 1949, 9–10; “What Is Israel?” (editorial), CC, 30 Aug. 1967, 1091. On the arguments over Coffin's article and on C&C's stance see Mark Hulsether, Building a Protestant Left: Christianity and Crisis Magazine, 1941–1993 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 85–86. For background see Carenen, Caitlin, The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel (New York: NYU Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coffman, Elesha J., The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar; David A. Hollinger, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), chapter 5; and Mart, Michelle, Eye on Israel: How America Came to View Israel as an Ally (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
12 On Vietnam see Hall; and Melvin Small, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988). The roots of the 1967 war went back as far as 1956, when Israel's attack on Egypt resulted in the stationing of a UN force in Sinai, effectively qualifying Egyptian sovereignty. See Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007); Wm Roger Louis and Avi Shlaim, eds., The 1967 Arab–Israeli War: Causes and Consequences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Guy Laron, The Six Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).
13 “Statement by Dr. Joachim Prinz, Chairman, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations,” 6 June 1967, press release, Conference of Presidents; David Polish, “Position Paper on the Mid-East Crisis,” sent by Jacob J. Weinstein, CCAR president, “Dear Colleague,” 8 June 1967. Both in Folder 6, Box 21, Alexander M. Schindler Papers (American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati). On American Jewish responses to the war more generally see Joshua Michael Zeitz, “‘If I Am Not for Myself …’: The American Jewish Establishment in the Aftermath of the Six-Day War,” American Jewish History, 88, 2 (June 2000), 253‒86; Lawrence Grossman, “Transformation through Crisis: The American Jewish Committee and the Six-Day War,” American Jewish History, 86, 1 (March 1998), 27‒54; Menachem Kaufman, “From Philanthropy to Commitment: The Six Day War and the United Jewish Appeal,” Journal of Israeli History, 15, 2 (1994), 161‒91; and Sara Yael Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
14 Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath and Irving Jay Fain, for UAHC and CSA, to Congregation Presidents et al., 1 June 1967, and “Declaration of Conscience,” both in packet of materials for Conference of Presidents, National Emergency Leadership Conference, Washington, DC, 7–8 June 1967, nearprint, BBP; Rabbi Balfour Brickner, Commission on Interfaith Activities, “Here and There #9,” Oct. 1967, Folder 16, Box 15, BBP.
15 Reinhold Niebuhr, “David and Goliath,” C&C, 26 June 1967, 141–42; John C. Bennett, “Further Thoughts on the Middle East,” C&C, 26 June 1967, 142; “Wise Men in the Middle East” (editorial), CC, 26 July 1967, 955. On the complexity of King's views on Israel/Palestine see Fischbach, Black Power and Palestine, chapter 4.
16 Willard G. Oxtoby, “Christians and the Mideast Crisis,” CC, 26 July 1967, 961, 962, 963, 964; J. A. Sanders, “Urbis and Orbis: Jerusalem Today,” CC, 26 July 1967, 967, 969; David Polish, “Why American Jews Are Disillusioned,” CC, 26 July 1967, 965, 966, 967. See Noam Pianko, Jewish Peoplehood: An American Innovation (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015).
17 Balfour Brickner, “No Ease in Zion for Us,” C&C, 18 Sept. 1967, 201, 202; Brickner, “Here and There #10,” Dec. 1969, 4, Folder 16, Box 15, BBP, 3.
18 John C. Bennett, “A Response to Rabbi Brickner,” C&C, 18 Sept. 1967, 204, 205; “What Is Israel?”
19 Balfour Brickner, “A Biblical Basis for the Modern State of Israel,” for symposium on Palestine Today, New York Theological Seminary, 16 April 1968; Brickner, “The Religious Meaning of the Land of Israel: A Jewish View,” The Dialogue: A Project of the National Conference of Christians & Jews, 37 (Oct. 1968), 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Both in Folder 1, Box 7, BBP.
20 Rabbi Balfour Brickner, “The Impact of the Current Middle East Situation on American Christian–Jewish Relations,” National Conference of Christians and Jews, 27 Jan. 1969, Folder 18, Box 15, BBP; Brickner for Commission on Interfaith Activities (CIA), “Here and There #11, Featuring: An Interpretation of the Jerusalem Issue as a Possible Cause of Future Christian–Jewish Tension,” Sept. 1971, Folder 15, Box 15, BBP.
21 Brickner, “Here and There #10,” 5; Simon Hall, Peace and Freedom: The Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements of the 1960s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005), 114; Marc Dollinger, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2018), 160.
22 Balfour Brickner, “Notes on a Freedom Seder,” Reconstructionist, 13 June 1969, reprinted in Michael E. Staub, ed., The Jewish 1960s: An American Sourcebook (Waltham, MA: University Press of New England, 2004), 276–81, 277, 281; Brickner, “Helping Our Children Identify with Israel,” paper read before Teachers Institute, Baltimore, Maryland, Nov. 1969, BBP; both in Box 7, Folder 4, 1. See Rossinow, “The 1900-Year Crisis”; Sleeper and Mintz, The New Jews; Porter and Dreier, Jewish Radicalism; Dollinger, Black Power, Jewish Politics; Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Troubling the Waters: Black‒Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); and Murray Friedman, What Went Wrong? The Creation and Collapse of the Black‒Jewish Alliance (New York: Free Press, 1994).
23 Brickner, “Helping Our Children Identify with Israel,” 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9.
24 Uri Avnery, Israel without Zionists: A Plea for Peace in the Middle East (New York: Macmillan, 1968). For a later key text see Boas Evron, Jewish State or Israeli Nation? (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). Also see Laurence J. Silberstein, The Postzionism Debates: Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999); Hanan Harif, “The Radical Israeli Intellectual You've Never Heard About,” Tel Aviv Review of Books, Spring 2019, at www.tarb.co.il/boas-evron-the-maverick-israeli-intellectual-youve-never-heard-about; and Ilan Pappé, The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge (London: Verso, 2014).
25 Uri Avnery, “Two Knights and a Dragon,” Antiwar.com, 6 Oct. 2007, at https://original.antiwar.com/avnery/2007/10/06/two-knights-and-a-dragon. Abraham J. Foxman, Anti-Defamation League, memorandum to ADL regional offices, 18 Sept. 1970, attached to Allan Brick, Fellowship of Reconciliation, to Board of Directors, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 23 Oct. 1970, in Box 11, Arthur Ocean Waskow Papers (American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History, New York).
26 Brickner, “My Zionist Dilemmas: Two Recent Cases,” 3. See Justin Vaїsse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Benjamin Balint, Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right (New York: Public Affairs, 2010); John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945‒1994 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Gary Dorrien, The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and Ideology (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); and Mark Gerson, The Neoconservative Vision: From the Cold War to the Culture Wars (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1996).
27 Brickner, “My Zionist Dilemmas: Two Recent Cases,” 5, 4; Balfour Brickner, “American Jews, Israel and Public Policy,” Worldview, Jan. 1972, 5; Brickner, “On Calley … and Silence,” American Report, 28 May 1971, 5. See Noam Kochavi, Nixon and Israel: Forging a Conservative Partnership (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009); and Natan Aridan, Advocating for Israel: Diplomats and Lobbyists from Truman to Nixon (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), chapter 9.
28 Rabbi Balfour Brickner, presentation, “‘If I Am Not for Myself …’: Particularism vs. Universalism in American Jewish Life Today,” papers from the plenary session of National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, 28 June‒2 July 1972, Los Angeles, 11, 13, 14, 15, Folder 2, Box 15, BBP.
29 Allan Solomonow to Kivie Kaplan, 14 April 1971; Solomonow, “The Jewish Peace Fellowship: Alternatives in the Middle East Packet: An Introduction,” n.d., both in Box 13, Kivie Kaplan Papers (hereafter KKP) (American Jewish Archive, Cincinnati).
30 See Riv-Ellen Prell, Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989); Staub, Torn at the Roots; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
31 Rabbi Balfour Brickner for the CIA, “Christian Reactions to the Middle East Situation,” Nov. 1973, 31; Brickner, “What Christians Should Be Saying to the Arab World,” CC, 16 Jan. 1974, rpt. by Commission on Interfaith Activities, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, nearprint, BBP.
32 Father Daniel Berrigan, “The Middle East: Sane Conduct?”, American Report, 29 Oct. 1973, reprinted in The Great Berrigan Debate (Nyack, NY: CONAME, 1974), 1–8, 3, 4, 5, 6. American Report was the publication of CALCAV, which by this time had shortened its name to CALC, to indicate its intention to work on issues beyond Vietnam. On Arab American activism around the Palestine issue at this time see Pennock, Pamela, The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s‒1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Yaqub, Salim, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.‒Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.
33 Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, “Response to Dan Berrigan,” American Report, Nov. 12, 1973, reprinted in Great Berrigan Debate, 9–12, 10, 12; June Stillman, American Report, 10 Dec. 1973, reprinted in Great Berrigan Debate, 19–20, 20, original emphasis.
34 Rabbi Balfour Brickner, “‘With Friends Like These …’,” American Report, 10 Dec. 1973, reprinted in Great Berrigan Debate, 13–16, 13, 15, 16; Allan Solomonow, “Loving Dan and Israel,” in Great Berrigan Debate, 30–35, 33; Brickner, “Issues Confronting Jews Today.” Solomonow noted that some in attendance at Berrigan's speech had walked out, evidently unhappy that he also had criticized Arab violence.
35 Brickner to Rabbi Joseph [Glazer], 20 May 1975; Balfour Brickner to Bob [Loeb], 5 May 1975, both in Folder 11, Box 1, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin Papers (American Jewish Archive, Cincinnati).
36 UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, “On Eliminating All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” 10 Nov. 1975, link available at the website of the Economic Cooperation Foundation, https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/1320; Balfour Brickner, Zionism, Judaism, and Racism: A Study Guide (New York: National Conference of Christian and Jews, n.d. [1976]). See Chamberlin, Paul Thomas, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Troy, Gil, Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight against Zionism as Racism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Feld, Marjorie N., Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle over Apartheid (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fischbach, Black Power and Palestine; and Fischbach, Movement and the Middle East.
37 “Cheerleaders for Defeatism,” Update: News & Analysis, 17 May 1976, 1‒2; Rabbi Joachim Prinz to Mrs. Rose [Matzkin], 11 June 1976, Folder 7, Box 12, BBP; “Factual and Other Errors in ‘Why Breira’ by Joseph Shattan, ‘Commentary’ April 1977” (Breira document), n.d., Folder 11, Box 12, BBP.
38 Bob [Loeb] to Joachim [Prinz], 12 Aug. 1976, Folder 7, Box 12, BBP; Albert Vorspan, “Why I Have Not Joined Breira,” Reform Judaism, Feb. 1977, 1.
39 UAHC Commission on Social Action, “The PLO Is Not a National Liberation Movement,” Nov. 1974, Folder 8, Box 16, KKP; Bob [Loeb], “Dear Breira Leader,” 26 Aug. 1976, Folder 8, Box 12, BBP; “Statements by JCC of Greater Washington and NJCRAC: ‘Patently False and Slanderous’,” Breira press release, 2 Feb. 1977 (last two both in Folder 1, Box 12, BPP).
40 Balfour Brickner, “Credo of a Dove Zionist,” Worldview, July–Aug. 1976, 6; Brickner, “Enough!” (draft), March 1977, Folder 3, Box 12, BBP; Balfour Brickner to Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, 14 March 1977, Folder 3, Box 12, BBP; Balfour Brickner to Arnold Jacob Wolf, 24 Feb. 1978, Folder 1, Box 12, BBP; Balfour Brickner interview notes, 11 Feb. 1981, Folder 1, Box 2, Paul M. Foer Breira Collection (American Jewish Archive, Cincinnati); Balfour Brickner, “What We Learned from the 1970's, II,” Sh'ma, 11 Jan. 1979, 36.
41 See Shindler, Colin, A History of Modern Israel, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), chapter 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shapira, Anita, Israel: A History (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012), chapter 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Busch, Andrew E., Reagan's Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of the Right (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006)Google Scholar; and Rossinow, Doug, The Reagan Era: A History of the 1980s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), chapter 1Google Scholar.
42 Rosenthal, Irreconcilable Differences?; Nepon, Justice; Waxman, Dov, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Kaplan, Amy, Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), chapter 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitelpunkt, Shaul, Israel in the American Mind: The Cultural Politics of US‒Israeli Relations, 1958‒1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 296‒310CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 320‒29; Samih K. Farsoun and Naseer H. Aruri, Palestine and the Palestinians: A Social and Political History, 2nd edn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2006), chapter 7; Khalidi, Rashid, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917‒2017 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020), chapter 5Google Scholar.
43 Brickner, “Issues Confronting Jews Today.” For early excavations (in different veins) see Polk, William R., Backdrop to Tragedy: The Struggle for Palestine (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Sayegh, Fayez A., Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (Beirut: Research Centre of Palestine Liberation Organization, 1965)Google Scholar; Maxime Rodinson, Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? (New York: Monad, 1973; originally published in France in 1967); and Search for Peace in the Middle East (Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, 1970). Also see Feldman, Keith P., A Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 Edward Said in the year 2000 called the Israel–Palestine question “America's last taboo.” The field of tension surrounding this issue is undeniably potent. Edward Said, “America's Last Taboo,” New Left Review, 6 (Nov.‒Dec. 2000), 45‒53, quoted in Feldman, 229. On the transnational rightward direction of politics in the 1970s see Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Kalman, Laura, Right Star Rising: A New Politics, 1974‒1980 (New York, 2010)Google Scholar; Niall Ferguson, Charles S. Maier, Erez Manela, and Daniel J. Sargent, eds., The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); and Magid, Shaul, Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021)Google Scholar.