Article | Conservative Judaism’s Zionism, 1948-1973

Photo: Independence Day 1953. P.M. and Minister of Defense, David Ben Gurion, on the grandstand during a parade in Haifa. Credits: PINN HANS הנס פין HANS PIN and the Israel Government Press Office

Article by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, Ph.D. MERCAZ Olami, President

With Israeli statehood a reality, Conservative Judaism became a full-fledged Zionist movement. For JTS chancellor Louis Finkelstein, the commitment to Israel was personal as well; his daughter had settled and established a family in Jerusalem, with her father making visits year after year. The chancellor reflected that “when I was her age, I too thought I was going to spend my life in Jerusalem, but I did not.”

After 1948, Finkelstein’s spiritual Zionist point of view emerged with ever greater clarity. Historian Eli Lederhendler, in “The Ongoing Dialogue: The Seminary and the Challenge of Israel,” makes note of “a letter to Rabbinical Assembly members in November 1951” — composed by Simon Greenberg, JTS faculty member and later vice chancellor, but sent out over Finkelstein’s signature — “of a variety of steps that the Seminary was taking or planning in order to develop ‘common spiritual aims’ between the Jewries of Israel and America.’”

As further noted by Dr. Lederhendler, Finkelstein’s view was that “Israel reborn is a sign of moral hope to the world, because the restoration of the Jews to their land signifies the possibility of change in history.” The chancellor expanded upon his Israel messaging in “The State of Israel as a Spiritual Force.” As Conservative Judaism’s paramount interpreter of Torah, Finkelstein explained that “in a certain sense it may be said that Conservative Judaism is itself the firstborn child of the marriage of Zionism and Americanism…. Precisely at this turn of human events [May 1948] so many of us have been called to Zion because part of the clarification of Torah in our day must come out of Zion. We turn to Zion not only in prayer but also in the hope of instruction.”

To further his Torah-centered Zionist goals, Rabbi Finkelstein, aided by vice chancellor Greenberg, negotiated with the Jewish Agency in 1952 “to strengthen the spiritual and cultural bonds between the State of Israel and America” by creating JTS’s Israel Institute, which offered public lectures on the place of Israel in the Jewish tradition and facilitated the exchange of scholars between JTS and The Hebrew University. Lecturers of prominence were to include JTS Prof. Saul Lieberman, philosopher Martin Buber, Zionist leader Hayim Greenberg, Hebrew University archaeologists Yigael Yadin and Benjamin Mazar, and JTS professors H.L. Ginsburg, Abraham Halkin, Hillel Bavli, and Mordecai Kaplan. The texts of these addresses were published in “Israel: Its Role in Civilization,” edited by Rabbi Moshe Davis in the mid-1950s.

Dr. Finkelstein wrote with pride about the scholarly symbiosis between Jewish academia in Jerusalem and New York. JTS brought to America “a group of scholars from Israel who have helped stimulate the minds of our students…. Among these scholars are Professor Saul Lieberman [among the first graduates of The Hebrew University in 1925, rector of the JTS rabbinical school from 1958 until his death in 1983, and son-in-law of religious Zionist luminary Rabbi Meir Berlin/Bar-Ilan], and of younger men such as Rabbis Shraga Abramson and Zalman Dimitrovsky [a sabra and veteran of the Haganah]…and [visiting] Professor Martin Buber….”

Finkelstein continued, “Due to the growing intimacy between Israeli institutions and the Seminary, [a] revolution in hokhmat Yisrael [Jewish scholarship] has at last come to pass. [Moreover], the vast majority of Seminary scholarly publications are now in Hebrew.”

As engagement with the reborn Jewish state intensified at JTS and among Conservative rabbis and in their congregations, mounting interest yielded a public forum addressing Conservative Jews’ connection to post-1948 Zionism. At the Rabbinical Assembly’s 1958 annual convention, two JTS ideological luminaries, Professors Abraham Joshua Heschel and Mordecai Kaplan, evaluated the theme in “The Ideological Evaluation of Israel and the Diaspora.” Rabbi Heschel spoke of the awe and wonder represented by the land, people, and state of Israel. His thoughts were put into print a decade later under the title “Israel: An Echo of Eternity.” Heschel reminded his JTS students and RA colleagues: “A mysterious relationship obtains between the Jewish people and the Jewish land…. [I]t is an essential part of our destiny…; one cannot detach himself from the land without upsetting one’s position within the Covenant” between God and Jewry.

Dr. Kaplan placed the unique relationship of Conservative Judaism into a call for formal entry into the institutional structure of American and world Zionism. “Zionism is with us not merely a peripheral but a central interest…. The Zionist movement and the Conservative movement are organically related to each other. This is not the case with either Orthodoxy or Reform.” Dr. Kaplan regarded Zionism as the best source for Jewish unity. “In Zionism [that is, the World Zionist Organization], if it accepts responsibility for reconstituting the Jewish people [as one people], the different denominations [Orthodox, Conservative, Reform] would be united by a common spiritual or religious bond.”

Inspired by both Heschel and Kaplan, at its 1959 annual convention, the United Synagogue of America (changed, in 1991, to United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism) continued the debate as to whether the organization should join the World Zionist Organization (WZO). (This formal step would take place in the 1970s as part of the expansion of the World Council of Synagogues.)

As religious Zionists, Heschel, along with Simon Greenberg, expressed the concern that official entry into a secular Zionist structure would undermine the primacy of the synagogue within global Judaism. In contrast, Mordecai Kaplan and Dr. Nahum Goldmann urged taking this institutional initiative; their goal was to affirm the unity of the Jewish people, both religious and secular folks, worldwide. The Conservative movement ought no longer be set apart from the rest of Am Yisrael. In Dr. Kaplan’s words, only by joining the WZO “can the common concern of all Jews for the State of Israel as the homeland of Judaism demonstrate the spiritual UNITY of the Jewish people.”

Although no concrete action was taken, the power of this idea remained alive. In 1963, Simon Greenberg, then JTS vice chancellor and acting as an individual, became a member of the executive committee of the WZO. Experiencing the inner workings of the national institutions of the Jewish people — the WZO, Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-JNF — Rabbi Greenberg expressed frustration that the Conservative movement had remained too separated from this Am Yisrael political fray. “The Conservative movement always has identified itself with all efforts that encourage and help Jews to settle in or at least visit Eretz Yisrael. We must recognize that as a movement we have not done nearly enough in this area.”

With first-hand familiarity, Dr. Greenberg lamented the Israeli religious establishment’s singular recognition of Orthodoxy to the exclusion of the Reform and Conservative streams. As historian Eli Lederhandler assessed, Rabbi Greenberg “called for practical efforts to establish the Conservative spiritual approach…. He directed the prestigious Schocken Library in 1962 to become part of JTS Jerusalem, supported the momentum to establish a Conservative seminary for Israeli rabbis, and generally acted as JTS’s Israel activities coordinator….” To this end, Dr. Greenberg also joined with another JTS vice chancellor, Bernard Mandelbaum, along with Rabbi David Goldstein of Har Zion Temple in Philadelphia in raising funds to create a JTS student center in Jerusalem. This was the beginning of a JTS Israel campus, with plaques displayed honoring Har Zion and Rabbi Goldstein. Also as recorded by Dr. Lederhandler, Rabbi Simon Greenberg, JTS’s primary Zionist activist and Goldstein’s predecessor at Har Zion, under the JTS banner “organized groups of intellectuals, students, and academics in Israel, encouraging the formation of Garin Aliya [a core group preparing to settle in Israel] among seminary students.”

In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, support for Israel blossomed among American Jews. Dr. Melvin Urofsky’s historical survey, “We Are One! American Jewry and Israel,” assessed that “polls found a level of support for Israel among Jews in general approaching near unanimity…. American Jews perceived intuitively that their destiny and that of the Jewish State were inextricably bound together.… This sense of belonging as Americans and as Jews, this rebirth of Jewish identity was perhaps the greatest legacy of the Six-Day War and forged new bonds between American and Israeli Jews.” For JTS, this enhanced global sense of Jewish peoplehood was reflected in more and more JTS rabbinical students spending a year of study in Israel (which became mandatory in 1975).

I was blessed to spend 1972-73 with my classmates, living and studying at the JTS “penimiya” (dorm and classrooms) as well as attending classes at The Hebrew University. Commitment to Israel was universal among my peers. It shaped our rabbinic careers. We developed a familiarity with the geography and history of “Ha’Aretz” (The Land) and an appreciation for the spiritual vitality of Israeli Judaism. A full year in Israel planted in us a desire to consider future aliyah. We also bonded closely with Israeli friends and relatives. Many of the sermons, columns, and books we went on to write became more imbued with a Zionist perspective. Conservative rabbis and lay leaders became the backbone of UJA/Federation, Israel Bonds, Jewish National Fund, and AIPAC. We became a proud Zionist movement.

The Zionist thrust of Conservative Judaism under Rabbi Louis Finkelstein was enhanced by the installation of Dr. Gerson D. Cohen as JTS chancellor in 1972. Dr. Cohen was born in New York City to an Orthodox, Zionist, and Hebrew-speaking family of Russian origin.

His mother was a longtime teacher at the Shulamith School for Girls in Borough Park, Brooklyn, the first Jewish day school for girls in North America. Though it was an Orthodox school, members of the teaching and administrative staff — including Gerson Cohen’s mother and the school’s dean, Dr. Judith Lieberman, wife of Rabbi Saul Lieberman and daughter of Rabbi Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan) — as family members of key JTS leaders, enabled Hebraism and Zionism to help shape the Conservative movement. Shulamith’s Jewish subjects were conducted in conversational Hebrew.

My wife — born Rita Neufeld, in 1951 — was a graduate of Shulamith in its stellar years. She benefitted immeasurably from her education at Shulamith, which instilled in her a deep love for the Hebrew language (she is fluent in Hebrew), the State of Israel, and the Land of Israel. The JTS team of chancellor Cohen and rector Lieberman shaped the Zionism of Conservative Judaism during their era.

Early in his chancellorship, at the spring 1973 Rabbinical Assembly convention, Dr. Gerson Cohen delivered a paper to the movement entitled “The Meaning of Israel in the Perspective of History.” The following are a few of his observations, guiding the Conservative rabbinate and institutional arms on behalf of the Jewish state:

Jewish Unity — “By virtue of its existence, and its successful struggle for survival, [the State of] Israel has become a unifying force for the Jewish people such as it has not enjoyed for some twenty centuries or more.”

Jewish Peoplehood — “The events of 1948, 1956, and 1967 aroused many Jews to rediscover themselves as a people. There is an eagerness among Jews to work together, on some issues at least, that has not been felt since Judea was under siege by the Babylonian army [587 BCE].”

Jewish Pride — “The rebirth of the Jewish state in the ancient homeland has also given the Jews of the world a new sense of pride in their Jewishness…. [T]he Jew has long…walked about with a burden of self-doubt…. Centuries of denigration made deep inroads into Jewish self-esteem.”

Inspiration — “The noble traits displayed by Israel’s defense forces, by Israeli youth in their readiness to give of themselves for their country, and by Israel’s kibbutzim in their efforts to create new model Jewish societies…have been a source of spiritual energy and inspiration to Jews everywhere.”

Torah — “The Bible was oriented to the Land, and complete fulfillment of the Torah was possible only within its borders. Jewish faith…was forever sanguine about the imminent possibility of the reclamation of the homeland.”

Originally published on The Times of Israel