Michael N. Barnett, a professor of international affairs and political science at George Washington University, traces the views of the American Jewish community regarding their country’s foreign policy from colonial times to the present. Barnett describes prevailing views in each period on a scale reflecting particularism or tribalism on one hand and universalism and cosmopolitanism on the other. Barnett focuses on the major Jewish organizations that supported universalistic trends in foreign policy — B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and the American Jewish World Service.
For most of their history, American Jews have chosen to ally themselves with liberal groups. They readily accepted Reform Judaism, which emphasized ethics and social justice rather than particularistic ritual. However, after World War II, during the “Golden Age” of American Jewry, elements of communal identity became increasingly particularistic, consisting of Holocaust remembrance and commitment to the new State of Israel. Now, Barnett argues, Jewish identity is again being defined in universalistic terms. One aspect of such definition is a “distancing” from Israel, especially among the younger generation. Symptoms of this new orientation are reflected in the emergence of the left-wing lobbying group J Street, which claims to be “pro-Israel and pro-peace,” as a rival to AIPAC, and in the the willingness of Jewish legislators to approve policies, such as the Iran nuclear deal, which might be potentially harmful to Israel.
Tikkun Olam, a traditional concept meaning Repairing the World, is a major concern among many of today’s American Jews; this concept draws the community to participate in non-Jewish causes on behalf of the persecuted and disadvantaged everywhere. Barnett concludes that American and‘ Israeli Jews hold vastly different values on the particularistic/universalistic scale. However, he thinks the Diaspora can guide the Jewish state to adopt a universalistic path.
Readers may find some material here distressing. Barnett believes that Israeli policies and actions are at fault, and expects an unhappy future of “quick fixes for the historical moment,” unless American-style universalism is adopted by the Jewish state. Included here are negative quotations about Zionism and Israel. Sociologist Thorstein Veblen linked Jewish statelessness and alienation with Jewish contributions to civilization. Hannah Arendt warned that the Jewish state would be “an armed and introverted society, in which political thought would center around military strategy[…] leaving the Arab problem as ‘the only real moral and political’ issue of Israeli politics.” The author does not state how much merit he finds in these views. Despite its controversial material and awkward title, which does not clearly reveal the contents, and a tendency to repeatedly offer the same arguments in slightly different language, this book deserves attention because the issues it raises should not be ignored.
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