Non­fic­tion

The Star and the Stripes: A His­to­ry of the For­eign Poli­cies of Amer­i­can Jews

Michael N. Barnett
  • Review
By – July 5, 2016

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.

Relat­ed Content:

Lib­by K. White is direc­tor of the Joseph Mey­er­hoff Library of Bal­ti­more Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty in Bal­ti­more, MD and gen­er­al edi­tor of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries Newsletter.

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