A Benchmark in the Breach

This morning I want to talk to you about one of the foundational documents of the Jewish people. It is not the Ten Commandments, not the Sh’ma, and not the Israeli Declaration of Independence. In fact, while I would consider it one of the most important documents by which to understand contemporary Jewry, I would bet my break-fast bagel that the vast majority of American Jews and Israelis have never heard of it. The document is called the Ben Gurion-Blaustein agreement, and I have left copies of it outside of the sanctuary for you to take as you leave shul today.

The agreement dates to August 23, 1950; it was entered into by the then Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, and David Blaustein, a major Jewish industrialist and the president of the American Jewish Committee, which at the time was as close to a representative body for American Jewry that there was. In order to appreciate the substance and sentiment of the accord, I am going to ask you to take a leap back in time with me to those years just after the establishment of Israel and some five years following the liberation of the camps. When we think about the AJC of today, we think of one of the most forceful and articulate voices on behalf of the State of Israel, but in those days, the AJC and, for that matter, large swaths of American Jewry had an ambivalent relationship with the nascent Jewish state. As the late Charles Liebman explains, while the AJC leadership supported Jewish settlement in Palestine, they opposed the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism. ((“Diaspora Influence on Israel: The Ben-Gurion-Blaustein ‘Exchange’ and Its Aftermath” in Jewish Social Studies 36:3-4, 1974). Their concerns were charges of dual loyalty – that if they supported the State of Israel, their patriotism to the United States would somehow become suspect. Only in 1946, after the Shoah, would the AJC leadership grudgingly support the partition plan. Sensitive to the problems Israel could create for them, they urged Israeli leadership to avoid “any pronouncements from which it might be inferred that the State of Israel regarded itself as the spokesman for the Jews of the world or for any Jewish community outside its own borders.” (Cited in Liebman, p. 273). The AJC leadership feared that Ben Gurion’s repeated and insistent demands that diaspora Jewry make aliyah, immigrate to Israel, would both raise questions regarding the loyalty of American Jews and undercut Jewish life in America. After all, in its original form, the argument for the Jewish state – Political Zionism – is an argument that negates diaspora Jewish life, shelilat ha-golah in Hebrew. It is one thing to have to live in exile before the State of Israel, but to choose to live in the diaspora post-1948 is not only to recuse oneself from the arc of Jewish history, but also to resign oneself to a second class, assimilation bound, Jewish life in a world that time and again has proven hostile to the Jewish people. The AJC leadership was thus insistent that Israel not contribute to the “propagation of Jewish nationalism in the US.” By 1950 Blaustein privately warned that Ben Gurion’s posture could undermine the good will and continued philanthropic assistance of American Jewry to Israel.

It was in this context that Blaustein flew to Israel seeking a twofold statement from Ben Gurion. First, he wanted assurances that Israel would not intervene in American Jewish life and second, he requested that Ben Gurion dial down his insistence on aliyah. The two negotiated for many hours, until finally at an official luncheon the two men declared a statement of principles. Ben Gurion moderated his stance on aliyah from an imperative to a choice, for those who “believe that their aspirations as human beings and as Jews can best be fulfilled by life and work in Israel.” As for the question of loyalties, Ben Gurion affirmed: “The Jews of the United States, as a community and as individuals, have only one political attachment and that is the United States of America. They owe no political allegiance to Israel . . . the State of Israel represents and speaks only on behalf of its own citizens and in no way presumes to represent or speak in the name of Jews who are citizens of any other country. We, the people of Israel, have no desire and no intention to interfere in any way with the internal affairs of Jewish communities abroad.” As for Blaustein, he affirmed American Jewry’s ties to America’s liberal democracy and recognized “the necessity and desirability” of helping make Israel a strong, viable and self-supporting state.” Mirroring Ben Gurion, Blaustein stated that while American Jewry can offer advice, cooperation and help, it would not attempt to speak in the name of other communities, Israel included. (Cited in Liebman)

The importance of the Ben Gurion-Blaustein agreement is not so much its durability, but rather that it is a benchmark – more honored in the breach than in the observance – of the relationship between American Jewry and the Government of Israel. Ben Gurion never really stopped telling American Jews not to forget where they belong: in Israel. In March of 1960, Moshe Dayan announced that the Israel government represents not just the people of Israel, but the interests of all Jews. That same year Foreign Minister Golda Meir similarly announced that “Israel will continue to speak for Jewry.” The infractions went both ways. In 1992, American Jewish lobbyists infuriated the government of Prime Minister Rabin for having “pushed too hard on the loan guarantees and against arms sales to Arab countries, poisoning the waters between the US administration and Israel.” (Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier of Peace, ed. D. Horowitz, p. 188) According to reports, Rabin excoriated AIPAC leaders: “You waged lost battles . . . you created much antagonism . . . you caused damage to Israel . . . Do not conduct my affairs with the administration.” (p. 189). Depending on the moment, be it AWACS to Saudi Arabia, loan guarantees, Oslo accords, or anything else, the Israeli government has either encouraged or resented the activism of American Jewry. So too American Jewry has felt the both the pleasure and pain of standing betwixt and between the Israeli and American administrations. As our upcoming Shabbaton speaker Dennis Ross describes in his forthcoming book Doomed to Succeed, although Reagan would win the 1981 battle over AWACS by a 52-48 vote, he was terribly frustrated with “what he perceived as Israel’s attempt to block an important national security objective.” “It is not the business,” Reagan stated in language eerily resonant of our own moment, “of other nations to make American foreign policy,” a statement that undoubtedly raised “the spectre of dual loyalty” for American Jewry. Time and again, American Jewry has been forced to contend with tensions that the Ben Gurion- Blaustein agreement was, at least in theory, supposed to help mitigate.

All of which brings us to the news of these past few months, weeks, days, and even hours. The front page of yesterday’s paper openly wondered if the administration’s victory on the Iran deal will prompt a reconsideration of the role of the pro-Israel lobby vis-a-vis the State of Israel and the American administration. The proceedings of this past year, certainly between the time of the Prime Minister’s address to Congress up through this week, has placed the American Jewish community in an awkward but not unprecedented position, wedged between the Israeli Prime Minister and the American President, not to mention partisan politics here in the States. In light of these past months, one cannot help but wonder how Ben Gurion or Blaustein would make sense of our moment given their vows not to interfere in each other’s affairs. No doubt historians will look back at this year and understand it as yet another case study in the tumultuous relationship between Israel and America and the bond of world Jewry that bridges the two.

The seeds for our present predicament were planted as far back as this week’s parashah. Moses informs the Israelites of the future ingathering of the exiles when “God will bring you together again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you . . . And the Lord your God will bring you to the Land your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. (Deuteronomy 30:4-6) Because we in this room have yet to make aliyah and fulfill the mandate of those words, the peculiar condition of the diaspora Jew remains unresolved. Moses could not have possibly predicted our present state of affairs: a sovereign Jewish state side by side with the most successful and secure diaspora Jewish community in history. A diaspora community that tells Israel what they should do and an Israeli leadership that tells American Jewry what they should do. An American Jewry divided over the question of what is or isn’t in the best interest of Israel and an Israeli government that readily asserts its interests in the American public sphere, the same public sphere inhabited by American Jews. Ben Gurion and Blaustein may not have gotten it all right, and our era is as different from theirs as night is from day. But to their great and enduring credit they understood the complexities involved and knew that great sensitivity would be needed if these two centers of Jewry would be able not just to co-exist, but to create a relationship in which they would both validate and enhance each other, all the while building an enduring bond. They asked the right questions, they struggled to find the answers, and they sought to figure it out together – all of which, my friends, is an effort worthy of emulation in our own day. This year, this month, this week, is a time of great moment for the relationship between American Jewry and Israel. The ground is shifting beneath us even as we speak. May we have the wisdom, patience, and resolve to speak, act, and cooperate in a manner that speaks to our better selves and highest hopes so we can look back at this time in the knowledge that it was by way of our efforts that the people and State of Israel were able to go from strength to strength and from generation to generation.