Transformation through crisis: the American Jewish committee and the Six-Day War.

Grossman, Lawrence K.

"As soon as the Arab armies began to mass on the borders of Israel," wrote Arthur Hertzberg immediately after the Six-Day War of June 1967, "the mood of the American Jewish community underwent an abrupt, radical, and possibly permanent change ... far more intense and widespread than anyone could have foreseen."(2) Other observers at the time and historians writing later have echoed Hertzberg's analysis. The wrenching fears about the possible destruction of the Jewish state in the days leading up to the war followed by the euphoria of quick victory moved Israel from the periphery of American Jewish consciousness to its center, awakened a new fascination with the Holocaust as the paradigm of modern Jewish vulnerability, and imbued many American Jews with unprecedented pride in being Jewish as well as a willingness to assert their Jewishness publicly.(3)

Despite this consensus that the Six-Day War marked a watershed in American Jewish history, today, more than 30 years later, not only is there no scholarly study of this change but we even lack accounts of how the transformation occurred within individual American Jewish organizations.(4) This analysis of the American Jewish Committee and the Six-Day War, then, breaks new ground. The Committee--self-consciously elitist, officially "non-Zionist," and only reconciled to the creation of a Jewish state when the U.S. backed the partition of Palestine in 1947-8--was hardly representative of American Jewry. But precisely its original coolness, if not outright hostility, toward the notion of a Jewish sovereign state and its traditional insistence on resisting the centripetal forces in American Jewish life so as to maintain freedom of action make AJC's extraordinary turnaround in 1967 so significant. Despite incremental changes in its views since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the AJC still was, at the beginning of June 1967, the major national Jewish body that was most self-consciously American, most reluctant to acknowledge links to other Jewish communities beyond those of religion and philanthropy, and least willing to subordinate institutional autonomy to the cause of Jewish communal solidarity. That it transformed itself almost overnight into a passionate defender of the Jewish state and, in so doing, shed old inhibitions to espouse Jewish peoplehood was itself a measure of the impact this crisis had on American Jewry as a whole.

The AJC, Zionism, and Israel(5)

The American Jewish Committee, the oldest existing Jewish defense and community-relations organization in the United States, was founded in 1906 by a small group of successful American Jews of Central European background. While the immediate impetus was the need for some organized body to speak for the Jewish community to the U.S. government about pressuring Tsarist Russia to stop pogroms against Jews, the Committee took on other issues as well, fighting against limitations on immigration to the U.S. and combating manifestations of anti-Semitism. A self-constituted Jewish elite mostly associated with the Reform movement in Judaism, the AJC worked quietly, behind the scenes, utilizing the contacts its members had with government officials and other influential Americans. In the eyes of the Committee, American Jews had no interests separate and apart from other Americans; what the AJC sought was simply to eliminate the barriers to full Jewish participation in American life and to secure, as far as possible, Jewish equality in other countries.

Committee members were conscious of their Jewish responsibility toward the large numbers of East European Jews entering the country but at the same time feared that these un-Americanized masses--bringing with them Old World customs and alien ideologies, holding public rallies and protest meetings instead of working patiently through the existing Jewish establishment--threatened to create the image in the public mind that American Jewry saw itself as a foreign culture transplanted artificially to American shores. Such an assumption might evoke an anti-Semitic reaction and endanger the status of all American Jews. Committee members, therefore, considering themselves the natural "stewards" of the community, took on the mission of educating the new arrivals in proper Americanism.

Although some AJC leaders were active Zionists, the majority were opposed to the movement. To be sure, hardly anyone was against helping unfortunate Jews from benighted countries find new homes in Palestine, the ancestral land of the Jewish people. In fact, many leading figures in the early AJC, most notably Jacob Schiff, donated large sums of money for that purpose. But the concept of a Jewish political entity was another matter entirely. In 1918 the Committee announced its support for the Balfour Declaration, in which the British government said it would "look with favor" upon "a national home for the Jewish People" in Palestine. AJC understood that document to mean only that the British government would facilitate the settlement of Jews in Palestine without infringing on the rights of the Arabs and would encourage the development of Jewish cultural life there.

Jewish sovereignty, whether in its minimalist form as a state for Jews who wanted to live there or, in its more radical version, as the culmination of a complete "ingathering of the exiles" and liquidation of the Diaspora, was anathema. Many in AJC were conditioned by the theology of Classical Reform Judaism to deny a national or ethnic dimension to Judaism and to define their religion solely in terms of universalistic monotheism and prophetic ethics. On practical grounds they feared that Jewish nationalism threatened the status of Jews all over the world since anti-Semites would be able to argue that the Jews' allegiance was to a Jewish state, not to their countries of residence. Furthermore, Zionism, like socialism and anarchism, was an ideology commonly associated with the Eastern European Jewish immigrants, and it reflected their dangerous radicalism.

The Committee's antipathy toward political Zionism became increasingly associated with the organization's elitist identity. After World War I American Zionists and others among the Eastern European community criticized AJC for being a self-appointed aristocracy. With the announced aim of bringing democracy to Jewish life, they initiated a movement for an elected "Congress" that would represent the rank and file of American Jews. AJC fought hard against the imposition of such a "democracy" that, it feared, would recklessly endanger American Jewry by foisting Zionism on it.

Despite the Committee's non-Zionism, its sympathy for Jewish settlement in Palestine, as expressed in its approval for the Balfour Declaration, provided a basis for cooperation with the Zionist movement on practical projects for building up the economy of Jewish Palestine. Thus in 1929, on the initiative of its president, Louis Marshall, the AJC agreed to join with the Zionists in a reconstituted Jewish Agency for Palestine; Zionists and non-Zionists would have equal representation. Thirteen years later, under the emergency situation created by World War II, the AJC leadership went even further, working out an agreement with the Zionists to back the creation of an "autonomous Jewish commonwealth" in Palestine if the Zionists, in turn, would drop their previous insistence on nurturing Jewish nationalism in the Diaspora. But anti-Zionist elements within the Committee scuttled this proposal.

More than anything else it was the Committee's resignation from the American Jewish Conference in 1943 that branded it for years thereafter--in some circles, even today--as inimical to Zionism. The Conference, an ad hoc body organized to coordinate postwar planning, endorsed the Zionist demand for a Jewish state in Palestine. In doing so it reflected the emerging consensus of American Jews, who, shocked by the horrors of the Holocaust which were just beginning to come to their attention, had determined that a sovereign Jewish state was needed to provide a haven for the survivors and some assurance that there was one spot on the globe--their own country--where Jews would not have to confront anti-Semitism.

However the American Jewish Committee, insisting that a Jewish state was no panacea, and determined once again to combat the notion that majorities could impose decisions in American Jewish life, walked out of the Conference. Not only did this decision evoke denunciations from other sectors of the community, it also precipitated the resignation of the Committee's remaining Zionists, some 10 percent of its membership.

The AJC adjusted with the times. Motivated primarily by the plight of homeless Holocaust survivors after the war, the AJC gradually moved from a position of advocating the admission of Jewish refugees into Palestine to support for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, especially once it saw the inevitability of American endorsement of the plan. But this about-face led to a new series of defections from the organization as die-hard anti-Zionists in the Committee joined the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), founded In 1942 on the proposition that Judaism and Jewish nationalism were incompatible.(6)

With the establishment of the State of Israel, AJC fully accepted the new reality and mobilized diplomatic and economic backing for the fledgling nation. AJC influence with administration officials was instrumental in securing U.S. government loans and grants-in-aid for Israel which, by 1963, totaled some $879 million. Negotiations with the Federal Republic of Germany, largely conducted by AJC President Jacob Blaustein, secured for Israel about $773 million in reparations. Also, AJC contacts with the State Department and with foreign diplomats ensured that Iran and Iraq allowed Jews to leave for Israel. Blaustein, no longer AJC president and acting in a private capacity, played a role in the U.S. decision to begin supplying arms to Israel during the Kennedy administration.(7) Israel publicly acknowledged AJC help. Abba Eban, who developed close relations with AJC during his years as Israel's ambassador to the UN, told the Committee: "No one will ever forget how you stood in vigilant brotherhood at the cradle of our emergent statehood; and how you helped lay the foundations of our international status and of our crucial friendship with the Government and people of the American Republic."(8)

Nevertheless practical support did not imply acceptance of Zionist ideology. Both to underline its consistent insistence that American Jews' sole political allegiance was to the U.S. and to refute American Council for Judaism charges that the AJC had capitulated to Jewish nationalism, Committee leaders--most vocally Jacob Blaustein--insisted that Israel explictly renounce any claim to speak on behalf of anyone other than its own citizens. The result was the Blaustein-Ben-Gurion Agreement of 1950. Reaffirmed several times in subsequent years, this statement deflected the charge of dual loyalty by declaring, in the name of the AJC and the Israeli prime minister, that American Jews "owe no political allegiance to Israel." After many twists and turns, and largely under the pressure of events, the AJC had made its peace with the existence of a Jewish state but not with its Zionist ideological underpinning.

Pro-Israel Non-Zionism

In the two decades after its founding Israel was of minimal interest to the AJC. For one thing the organization tended to focus on domestic issues. As one long-time staff member, hired in 1966, recalled, "it was very much of a civil rights agency" when he came on board. There was even talk of removing "Jewish" from the organization's name and calling it the Institute for Human Relations.(9) On the assumption that Jewish rights were safest when the rights of all were protected, AJC after World War II broadened its interests from fighting anti-Semitism to promoting interreligious and interethnic understanding and supporting equal rights for blacks. On the assumption that "science" might offer a cure for bigotry, the Committee funded scholarly analyses of the psychodynamics of prejudice.(10) In the international arena the AJC was prominently identified with the cause of human rights. It also used its influence to aid Jewish communities threatened by anti-Semitism--primarily in Latin America and the Middle East--and, regarding what went on behind the Iron Curtain, where direct intervention was not possible, the Committee published pathbreaking research that exposed communist anti-Semitism. In the early 1960s the AJC gave high priority to securing a favorable statement on Catholic-Jewish relations from the Second Vatican Council. And around the same time signs of an erosion of Jewishness among younger Jews led some in AJC to express interest in studying the dynamics of Jewish identity and possibly developing forms of Jewish expression that might appeal to an American-born generation that had no memory of immigrant life or personal contact with anti-Semitism. In the constellation of major American Jewish organizations, AJC was distinguished for its scholarly tone, its programmatic moderation, and the priority it gave to the successful integration of Jews into the American mainstream.

There was almost no AJC interest in Israel. AJC annual meetings before 1967 occasionally discussed Israel-related issues--the Arab economic boycott, worrisome arms sales to Arab states, and, of course, the Suez War of 1956--but these matters were clearly tangential to the interests of most members. AJC annual reports usually included the Middle East way down on a list of "Overseas Concerns." The annual addresses of executive vice president John Slawson and of AJC presidents rarely discussed Israel in any substantive way. The priorities of the agency were expressed accurately in a memo from the AJC program director. Rejecting a piece on Israel for the front page of the September 1966 AJC Newsletter, he explained: "I'm not clear as to what qualifies it as a lead article after a summer of Argentina, race riots, burgeoning consciousness of Jewish identity, a Congress in session, and a growing rightwing extremism."(11)

Only a small group of top AJC leaders drew closer to Israel during these years. These were the officers and board members who went on AJC missions to the Jewish state beginning in 1949. The official reports of these missions, concerned primarily with policy issues, convey little of the emotional impact Israel had on the visitors. An Israeli who witnessed the arrival of the first AJC group recalled, "they were so excited, these anti-Zionists." Irving Engel, chairman of the AJC executive committee from 1949 to 1954 and president from 1954 to 1959, described all of the missions as "thrilling."(12) But the effects of the visits to Israel were purely personal and did not trickle down to the rest of the organization. Significantly, chapter leaders were not included on these missions till 1965.(13)

The meager interest in Israel at AJC's national headquarters was even weaker at the grassroots level. One of the founders of the Dallas chapter later remembered that the members "had a nothing feeling" about Israel.(14) "Nobody knew much, nobody was interested," recalled the professional who ran AJC's Westchester chapter at the time:

I remember once, I think it must have been in the winter of '66-'67, one of

the meetings that I arranged for AJC. It was a Sunday night Westchester

chapter meeting. Got the assistant consul general of the Israeli Consulate

to come to give a speech. I mean we had no turnout. Nobody cared.(15)

Such apathy toward Israel in Westchester, a suburb of New York City and surely one of the most jewishly sophisticated and internationally oriented AJC chapters, spoke volumes about the situation in other communities.

AJC actions in the wake of Israel's Sinai campaign of 1956, though apparent exceptions to the overall pattern of distancing from Israel, actually fit right in. As defenders of the Jewish state, AJC leaders intervened energetically in the highest circles of the American government to minimize the diplomatic damage to Israel from its invasion of Egypt. But, as historian Naomi Cohen notes, AJC's involvement was not based on any strategic vision of Israel's role in the Middle East or even on any legitimate security concerns of the Jewish state. Rather, AJC was motivated by embarrassment at Israel's surprise move and the "grave public relations issue" it created. Thus "the Committee worked to convince Israel to renounce any expansionist aims, and, at the same time, to prevent the United Nations, prompted by American initiative, from imposing sanctions upon Israel." Confirmation for the AJC view that the reckless Israelis had gotten themselves into hot water and needed the AJC to save them came from UN Ambassador Abba Eban: saying that he had been given no advance warning that his nation was about to invade, Eban came to the AJC and requested help in dealing with the American administration.(16) It was natural for AJC to see itself as the level-headed patron and Israel as the headstrong dependent, a relationship that uncannily mirrored that between AJC and the newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe decades earlier.

Indeed, even after 1956 there persisted in the minds of many veteran AJCers remnants of pre-1948 uneasiness about a state claiming to be the Jewish national home. Such feelings sometimes came to the surface. Jacob Blaustein, the AJC president who negotiated the agreement with David Ben-Gurion that denied any Israeli claim to the political allegiance of American Jews, was ever on the alert for Israeli "violations" of the accord, such as calls for American Jews to immigrate to Israel, Israeli attempts to speak in the name of Diaspora communities, or statements implying that American Zionists were more representative of American Jewry than non-Zionists.(17) Even positive AJC statements about Israel sometimes sent a mixed message. Speaking at the 1958 annual meeting, President Irving Engel stated that "Israel was the world's answer to the Romanov czars and their pogroms, to Adolf Hitler and his Auschwitz" but went on to complain that Israel did not separate church and state, subordinated its Arab population, and discriminated against non-Jews through the Law of Return.(18) At the next annual meeting, with Israel's UN Ambassador Abba Eban sitting on the dais, Engel called Israel "a merciful haven for the many Jews who need or wish to go there. But one word of caution: we do not see exodus to Israel as the answer for those Jews--and they constitute a majority--who are seeking equality and a secure future elsewhere."(19) When Israeli agents kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 and Israel prepared to put him on trial, AJC leaders sought privately to convince Prime Minister Ben-Gurion to allow a trial by an international tribunal, both to head off potential anti-Semitic charges that Jews believe in "eye-for-an-eye" justice and to emphasize to all the world that Israel had no mandate to speak for world Jewry. Only when it became evident that Ben-Gurion would not budge did the AJC publicly defend the trial in Israel on the ground that "if Eichmann were not tried in Israel, he probably would not be tried at all."(20)

Ambivalence about the Jewish state was understandable. AJC leaders who grew up in the early part of the century could hardly be expected to shed their conceptions of American Jewish identity or their notions of what constituted a proper pluralistic democracy just because the State of Israel had become a fait accompli. These men had struggled to make it in a prewar American society rife with anti-Semitism, and they had succeeded without renouncing their Jewishness. Accepting the historical necessity, and therefore the legitimacy, of a Jewish state, they could not affirm that such a state, thousands of miles away and one which, unlike the U.S., gave preferential status to one religio-ethnic group, had any Jewish implications for them.

Two AJC presidents--Irving Engel (born 1891, AJC president 1954-9) and Morris Abram (born 1918, AJC president 1964-8)--have recounted the great difficulty they had in adjusting to a postwar world with a sovereign Jewish nation in the Middle East. Both were successful lawyers who grew up in the South, where Jewish identity was universally understood in religious terms and "Jewish nationalism" was an oxymoron. By his own account, Irving Engel before 1948 "was opposed to the creation of a new state for the Jews," a feeling reinforced by World War II, which convinced him "that nationalism, whatever purpose it had served in previous history, had become a scourge to humanity; and I just assumed that after the world saw what destruction and suffering had been caused by nationalism during the Hitler period, there would be a lessening of nationalism after the war." Only when he saw that nationalism was still "rampant all over the world" even after Hitler's defeat did Engel "become convinced, as the other leaders of the American Jewish Committee did . . . that there was no reason why the Jews should be denied nationalism when all other people had it, and that there should be some place on this earth where a Jew in distress could come without having to get permission from somebody else."(21) A Jewish state, then, was justified for lack of any alternative.

Morris Abram was a prominent advocate of racial Justice, and his ascension to the AJC presidency in 1964 reaffirmed the organization's liberal political stance. Abram recalled growing up in Georgia: "I was very anti-Zionist, God, I was anti-Zionist." He considered Zionists "nuts who were going to interfere with this sweet and easy flow of amity between Jewish Americans and other Americans by creating a state which was bound to create dual loyalties and which was bound to create all kinds of questions in the minds of people who otherwise were very sensible and had agreed to a peaceful coexistence with Jews in this country." Abram remembered "making many, many anti-Zionist speeches; you couldn't tell the difference between me and the leading members of the American Council for Judaism in those days." Only when Abram learned firsthand about the Holocaust while serving on the prosecution team at the Nuremberg Trials did he recognize the need for a Jewish state. And even in 1963, when he joined AJC, Abram could not bring himself to use the term "Jewish people," referring to himself as "a Jew and an American-period."(22) Events would soon lead him to alter that self-definition.

Inching toward the Mainstream

For all of AJC's lack of interest in, and lingering ambivalence toward Israel, it had to face the reality that its orientation to the Jewish state would help determine the agency's success or failure as a force on the American Jewish scene. In January 1954 President Engel described the Committee as situated at the center between "ideological extremists--some Zionist leaders at one end, and some Council for Judaism members at the other."(23) But choices had to be made. On the one hand, the Council, which had not gone out of business with the establishment of the State of Israel, kept up a withering attack on the AJC for abandoning anti-nationalist principles in 1948 and sought to recruit members from the AJC's traditional base of support--wealthy and highly Americanized Reform Jews. On the other hand, any AJC attempt to soften its elite image and broaden its base--that is, to make AJC more of a mainstream Jewish organization--required a more positive approach toward Zionism and Israel to counterbalance the memory of pre-1948 AJC policies.

Though drastically weakened by the success of Zionism in establishing a Jewish state, the American Council for Judaism--led till 1955 by former AJC executive committee member Lessing Rosenwald--repeatedly criticized AJC for ideological inconsistency. If the Committee still opposed Jewish nationalism, as it claimed, why did it use its influence in high places to support a Middle Eastern nation that not only called itself a "Jewish State" but flagrantly discriminated against non-Jews? The ACJ pounced on every example of Israeli backsliding from Ben-Gurion's 1950 agreement with Blaustein to urge the AJC to repudiate Israel. And in the hope that the AJC might return to its pristine opposition to Zionism, the Council periodically sent out feelers about the possibility of an organizational merger.(24)

This was a tricky matter for the AJC since many of its members, especially in the South and West, did not grasp the ideological distinction between the anti-Zionism of the ACJ and the non-Zionism of the AJC, which, in fact, had been a distinction without much of a difference till AJC's turnabout of 1947-8. Since both organizations competed for the same narrow segment of American Jewry, it was not uncommon, in the 1950s and early 1960s to belong to both organizations, and the idea of a merger was not as strange as it seems in retrospect. In 1956 AJC felt sufficiently threatened by the widespread confusion to prepare a paper for its members delineating the differences between the two groups.(25)

Since the AJC did share ACJ's antipathy toward a national definition of Jewishness, its public critiques of the Council centered less on principle than on pragmatism. Once Ben-Gurion assured the AJC in 1950 that he recognized the exclusively American political loyalties of American Jews, the AJC--both as part of the National Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC), a Jewish umbrella organization, and in a separate statement of its own--called on the ACJ to cease its public relations activities since they spread the dangerous idea that American Jews sympathetic to Israel were guilty of dual loyalty.(26) In 1957 AJC published a "fact-sheet"--for AJC members only and not for general distribution--entitled "Nature and Consequences of the Public Relations Activities of the American Council for Judaism," which charged that anti-Semitic forces were utilizing ACJ materials to malign Jews. In 1963 AJC allowed the New York Board of Rabbis to reprint sections of the "fact-sheet" in a widely distributed pamphlet attacking the ACJ, "A Factual Study: The American Council for Judaism, an Analysis and Evaluation of its Platform and Program."(27) By that time, however, AJC's institutional imperatives had made it much less sensitive to the Council's point of view. Simply put, the idea of an AJC ideology midway between Zionism and the ACJ was obsolete because the Jewish community had shifted massively toward the Zionist pole, and the AJC risked being marginalized if it did not adjust.

Though the Committee had begun in the 1940s to establish local chapters in order to broaden its constituency, by the early 1960s, writes Naomi Cohen, AJC "had virtually stopped growing."(28) In 1962 Executive Vice President John Slawson told a newly organized AJC Committee on National Growth that one reason Jews were reluctant to join was that "there is still a feeling that we are anti-Israel."(29) Morris Abram came in contact with this perception in 1963, soon after becoming active in AJC. Reporting glowingly to an audience of Reform rabbis about his first AJC mission to Israel, he was shocked to hear one of the rabbis say that, while he agreed with the sentiments, "it was inconceivable that an officer of the American Jewish Committee" should have been so positive about Israel.(30) A survey sponsored by the Committee confirmed that popular stereotypes about AJC were rooted in reality. Two populations--one a sample of American Jews belonging to rival organizations and the other American Jewish Committee members--were given a list of Jewish behaviors and asked which were essential to being Jewish. It was on "Support Zionism" that there was the largest gap between the two samples, with the AJC members far less enthusiastic than the others. The authors of the survey recommended that AJC move to "becoming more sympathetic to and understanding of the mass appeal which Israel has had for Jews in America, and therefore give greater recognition and aid to Israel."(31)

Distancing itself from the American Council for Judaism, then, was only one part of a broad AJC strategy in the early 1960s to reposition the organization closer to the American Jewish mainstream by placing greater emphasis on Israel. Several positive steps were taken. In 1961 John Slawson handpicked Theodore Tannenwald to chair the organization's Israel Committee precisely because, unlike the great majority of veteran AJC activists, Tannenwald "had very close relations with several of the top Israeli officials" as a result of his service in the State Department during World War 11. Tannenwald was aware that Slawson's purpose in reaching out to him was "to lose the anti-Zionist hue that the Committee had."(32) At the same time the Committee hired George Gruen, a recent Columbia University Ph.D., as the first staff person in AJC history assigned specifically to Middle Eastern affairs. That Gruen was a traditionally observant Jew also signalled a broadening of AJC's vision of the Jewish community.(33)

The most significant initiative in revising AJC's image was the establishment in November 1961 of an Israel office in Tel Aviv, a decision that grew out of AJC's leadership missions to Israel. Since such an office was a radical departure for the AJC, which had been so indifferent to Zionism for so long, it was originally financed off budget on an experimental basis. In 1965 the Board of Governors voted to include the office in the regular budget; as one board member explained, this was vital "in terms of AJC's image in certain segments of American Jewry who still think of us as anti-Zionist, or, at best, neutral with respect to the future of Israel."(34)

But in the history of organizations, even significant shifts can carry over old assumptions. In setting up the Israel office, AJC remained bound to its traditional discomfort with Zionism and its paternalism toward Israelis: The AJC-IsraeI link was explained as an opportunity to teach the Jewish state how to run a civilized democracy. Announcing the plan to open the office, Alan Stroock, chairman of the Israel Committee in 1960, noted that some Israeli actions embarrassed the AJC and that the elimination of "anti-democratic practices and attitudes" in Israel would make it easier for the AJC "to invoke principles of human rights and practices in our country and abroad." Specifically, the projected AJC office would preach separation of church and state, rights for the Arab minority, and the inadmissibility of Israel speaking for Jews outside its borders. There was not the slightest suggestion that the State of Israel had anything to teach American Jewry, let alone the American Jewish Committee. Establishing the office in Israel was not a "changed" policy for AJC but an "expanded program."(35) The insistence that AJC had not shifted course on Zionism, as well as the self-congratulatory Americanism and condescension toward Israel evident in the process of setting up an office there, reflected common AJC attitudes. "The bottom-line message of why we had an office," said George Gruen years later, was "to tell those parochial Israelis there that America is ours. You know, we're living fine here, and we have things to teach you, you know."(36)

To convey AJC's refurbished attitude toward Israel to the broader Jewish community, the Committee Reporter, the organization's house organ, ran a two-part series on "Israel, Zionism and the AJC." The old tension between AJC and Zionism was recast in more benign terms. The movement to create a Jewish state, on the one hand, and AJC's quest to seek equality for Jews wherever they lived, on the other, were both "mainstreams of Jewish life" since "non-Zionism has never meant opposition to ideological Zionism." AJC had opposed Zionist initiatives in the 1940s because the Committee had placed primary stress on the "human concerns" of saving refugees, while it felt that Zionist leaders subordinated that cardinal aim to their ambition for a Jewish state. The AJC's public condemnation of the American Council for Judaism was given considerable space, as were AJC's backing for Israel's admission to the UN, help in securing financial aid for the Jewish state, and "support of Israel within the best interests of American foreign policy." Where the AJC parted company with some of the more zealous Zionists, however, was over AJC insistence that "America and Judaism were mutually enriching." AJC insisted that Diaspora Jews were under no political obligation to the Jewish state, a position that the Israeli government fully accepted. The article closed with the announcement that AJC had just opened an office in Israel so that its relations with Israel, already 14 sympathetic and effective," would now be presented in "a more direct method" to Israelis.(37)

In 1964 AJC produced a 70-page pamphlet on the same theme, In Vigilant Brotherhood: The American Jewish Committee's Relationship to Palestine and Israel. In some detail this publication reiterated the Committee's support for Israel, its friendliness for, though separation from, Zionism, its insistence on the legitimacy of the American Jewish community, and its concern about aspects of Israeli life that it considered less than fully democratic. The title "In Vigilant Brotherhood" was taken from the glowing description of the AJC's relationship with Israel enunciated by Abba Eban at the 1959 annual meeting, and a larger quotation from the Eban speech was printed on the inside front cover. In a letter to AJC leaders that accompanied the pamphlet, President Morris Abram explained its importance in relocating the AJC on the communal map:

It will prove helpful to you in clarifying to others the role of the

American Jewish Committee in the development of the Jewish community

in Palestine and the creation of the independent State of Israel.

As you well know, these are subjects about which some unfortunate popular

misconceptions still exist.(38)

Facing the Abyss

In the mid-1960s, as the AJC positioned itself closer to the American Jewish mainstream, it consistently backed Israel against the threat of Arab aggression even as Israel remained a peripheral issue for the organization. At its 1965 annual meeting the AJC passed a rare resolution on the Middle East calling on the American government to use its leverage to gain Arab recognition of the Jewish state, and, since Israel was militarily "beleaguered" as a result of the huge build-up of Arab armaments, the U.S. should help maintain the balance of power through economic aid to Israel and opposition to the Arab boycott.(39)

Yet despite the distance it had traveled both in its policies and its public relations, the AJC was not yet quite part of the American Jewish mainstream. Still an explicitly non-Zionist and self-consciously "American" organization, it lacked a vision of Jewish peoplehood and a visceral feeling of common destiny with the Jewish state. Thus AJC continued to insist on its right to make independent judgements on Israel's actions even if that placed the Committee outside the communal consensus. And the AJC remained uniquely sensitive to the danger that Israeli actions might harm the public image of American Jews.

AJC's lingering distinctiveness was illustrated in November 1966--less than seven months before the Six-Day War. After a series of attacks by Arab terrorists who crossed the border from Jordan, Israel launched a retaliatory raid that ended with 18 Jordanians killed and 54 injured. The UN Security Council voted, with one abstention (New Zealand), to censure Israel. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which the AJC was not a member, issued a statement defending Israel's actions on the grounds of self-defense. The community's other key umbrella organization, the National Community Relations Council (NCRAC), was unable to endorse the statement because AJC's veto prevented the necessary unanimity.(40) A confidential memo to AJC field offices stated that, in AJC's view, Israel's raid was disproportionate to the provocation and suggested that an "Israel is always right" stance "is not likely to impress American public opinion . . . with either the objectivity or reliability of American Jewish organizations when speaking about Israel." As proof of how solidarity with Israel could trigger hostile public opinion, the memo cited a Washington Post editorial that criticized American Jewish organizations that marched in lockstep with Israeli policy.(41)

But events would soon override AJC's scruples. At the beginning of 1967 tensions rose on the Israeli-Syrian border. Informed--incorrectly--by the Soviet Union that Israel was massing for an attack on Syria, Egypt began to mobilize. On May 16 Egypt called for the removal of UN troops that had been stationed on the border with Israel after the 1956 war. UN Secretary General U Thant complied, and Egyptian troops massed on the Sinai border. On May 23 Egyptian President Nasser threatened to close the Strait of Titan to Israeli shipping, a step that would violate assurances given to Israel in 1956. Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol announced the next day than any interference with Israeli shipping through the Strait would be considered an act of aggression against Israel. Nasser spoke of a general Arab war to destroy Israel, and the message was echoed in bloodthirsty terms by the Arab media.

AJC convened for its annual meeting on May A. There was concern over the situation in the Middle East, but the issue hardly took center stage; Morris Abram's presidential address did not even mention it. The Committee on Israel proposed a policy statement, approved unanimously on May 21, calling on the U.S. government to issue an "immediate and unequivocal reaffirmation of the fundamental United States commitment to Israel." President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk were telegrammed copies of the statement. Former AJC President Jacob Blaustein, who had excellent contacts within the administration, sent a more strongly worded telegram of his own to the president two days later urging him to state "publicly and privately" to the Arab states and the Soviet Union that, if the UN proved impotent, the U.S. would "act on its own to prevent aggression."(42) Bronstein spent two days in Washington the next week conferring with the Secretary of State, the Israeli ambassador, and other officials. Pressed by Blaustein about what would happen should Nasser not back down, Secretary Rusk replied, "then we will really have to do something serious." While refusing to commit himself as to whether the U.S. would intervene unilaterally, Rusk told Blaustein, "You can tell your Israeli friends this: 'They will not be left alone."' He noted that "very strong messages" had been relayed to the USSR not to intervene and expressed the hope that neither the Arabs nor the Israelis would fire the first shot.(43)

AJC's longstanding inhibitions about public Jewish assertiveness immediately came into play. Presenting the proposed policy statement on Israel to the annual meeting plenum, Theodore Tannenwald, chairman of the Israel Committee, expressed what he called a "public relations" concern: What would the American administration think when Jews, so many of whom vocally opposed the Vietnam War, asked for American intervention in the Middle East? Somehow, the request for government help must be made not to seem a Jewish issue.(44)

Indeed, the Vietnam War and the opposition it had aroused in the Jewish community severely complicated AJC's position. While public opinion polls showed that American Jews were as evenly divided over the war as the rest of the nation, widely publicized antiwar resolutions passed in 1966 by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the American Jewish Congress, the Synagogue Council of America, and the National Council of Jewish Women had led President Johnson, that September, to suggest that the abandonment of a small democracy in the Far East would make it difficult to sustain another small democracy in the Middle East. Although the White House denied that any threat was intended, many Jews were alarmed by Johnson's analogy.(45) For its part, AJC, true to its tradition of caution, moderation, and American patriotism, took no position on the war other than "everyone's irrevocable right to speak out on this or any issue."(46) Indeed, no less a personage, than President Johnson himself had sought to neutralize AJC qualms about the war. Appearing at the AJC annual meeting in May 1966 to accept the American Liberties Medallion "for exceptional advancement of the principles of human liberty," Johnson told the AJC that "your people," who had suffered so much over the centuries while others stood by, should be the first to understand "that the threat to your neighbor's freedom is only a prologue to the attack on your own freedom." The hint that Israel's security might be dependent on South Vietnam's was unmistakable.(47)

Now, a year later, pressure on the administration to help Israel would require a delicate touch. At the conclusion of the annual meeting AJC leaders were informed by the chairmen of the Foreign Affairs and Israel committees that "moderately worded telegrams from local groups, either individually or jointly with non-Jewish groups, may be sent to the White House, the State Department and congressmen. However we strongly oppose the organization of mass meetings, rallies or other public demonstrations" since "the highest authorities" considered that "counterproductive."

But mass meetings and rallies in support of U.S. intervention for Israel were proliferating in Jewish communities around the country whether AJC liked it or not, and requests came in to national headquarters to clarify AJC's position on participation. After meeting with the Conference of Presidents on May 2 6, Morris Abram decided to soften the AJC position somewhat. While advising local chapters to "contact non-Jewish, repeat non-Jewish, leaders" and warning that "extremist actions like picketing or street demonstrations are not advisable since they may exacerbate [the] situation and make it a Jewish issue," he also instructed: "within the Jewish community cooperate fully with other responsible groups." NCRAC sent out copies of Abram's memo to indicate that even the AJC sanctioned peaceful and orderly public activity.(48) Local AJC chapters, following the new guidelines, entered into discussions about joint action with other Jewish groups. A memo from the AJC Community Services Department summarized the situation on the eve of the war:

We have encountered problems in several communities where mass meetings were

being organized by Zionist groups along immoderate and intemperate lines and

without adequate representation of leaders of the general community. Our

chapters, on being invited to co-sponsor these meetings, have been

successful in their insistence that the nature of these meetings should

be modified. As far as we are aware at present, there are no

instances throughout the country wherein AJC chapters and units

are not cooperating with other local Jewish groups in this regard.

In ... Virginia, our area director is serving as the state liaison

for all Jewish communities with national agencies in connection with

mobilizing state support. Throughout the country, our members

are being asked by their chapter chairmen to make contributions for

Israeli purposes.(49)

On June I, NCRAC and the Conference of Presidents announced a massive national rally in solidarity with Israel for June 7-8 in Washington, DC. Though this was precisely the kind of public event that the AJC had always shunned--even during the Holocaust AJC deplored mass rallies--Morris Abram immediately endorsed it and urged AJC chapters to encourage members, especially those "known to senators and congressmen," to attend. AJC quickly published and distributed a fact sheet on the situation, "Crisis in the Middle East: Questions and Answers." It would be the only publication distributed at the Washington rally.(50)

At dawn on Monday, June 5 (Israeli time), even before Abram could officially notify the AJC about the Washington rally scheduled two days later, war broke out. Unwilling to wait any longer for Western intervention and convinced that Egypt and Syria would soon attack, Israel launched a preemptive strike. Despite Israeli assurances to Jordan that it would not be attacked if it stayed out, Jordan joined the war against Israel. The Jewish state was encircled by enemies determined to end its existence. The U.S. State Department issued a statement of American neutrality, though the White House quickly explained that this did not imply "indifference."

Through that morning and afternoon American Jews, ignorant of the course of the war and profoundly frightened by Arab media descriptions of an Israeli debacle, held their collective breath. Many highly Americanized Jews who had never before affiliated with the community found themselves moved by Israel's plight. That day, wrote Morris Abram, "marks the beginning of the revival of a fearful collective unconscious in world Jewry." Abram recalled that "there appeared in the halls of the American Jewish Committee Americans of Jewish ancestry so totally assimilated as to have changed the actual pronunciation of their names, haunted now by the specter of history and the common fate of Jews." Abram was particularly impressed when Ambassador Lewis Strauss, "pronounced by him Straws," formerly associated with the American Council for Judaism, offered to help.(51)

A special emergency meeting was called for 12:30 P.m. that day. Strauss and the well-connected New Deal lawyer Benjamin Cohen Joined a small group of AJC leaders and staff to address the crisis. None of them believed that Israel could emerge from its predicament on its own. John Slawson, who was there, later described the atmosphere in the room: "It was a foregone conclusion that the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria would penetrate and be able to destroy Israel. What could we do?"(52) The discussion focused on how to get the American administration to intervene. After brief reports on AJC's actions up to that point and on Jacob Blaustein's meeting with Dean Rusk, a number of suggestions were made. Morris Abram said that congressmen, especially Republicans, should be asked to phone President Johnson and assure him of their support if he helped Israel. Strauss promised to ask former President Eisenhower to make such a call. Also, pointing out Secretary Rusk's reputation for "indecisiveness," Strauss proposed that the AJC work through Secretary of Defense McNamara. Perhaps an announcement that the U.S. would provide Israel with planes and that the ExportImport Bank was loaning Israel $ 100 million might turn the tide in favor of the Jewish state. It was decided not to ask the administration to send in the Sixth Fleet since this might induce the Russians to enter the conflict. Various strategies were discussed for differentiating U.S. help for Israel from the controversial war in Vietnam, such as stressing Israel's insistence that it did not need or want American combat personnel. Those present agreed on the importance of giving the rally in Washington "a multiethnic, multi-religious character."(53)

The situation was so desperate that they decided to contact the administration immediately and urge the government to save Israel. Irving Engel, who had been AJC president at the time of the Suez Crisis in 1956, phoned his friend Eugene Rostow, an assistant secretary of state, and asked him to arrange a private meeting with President Johnson. He later recalled, "I said we didn't want any publicity; we would come in by the back door, or whatever way he wanted, but if we could just have a little of the President's time, we would appreciate it. So he said he would see what he could do and call me back." Late that afternoon Engel hosted a previously scheduled party at his home. With heavy hearts, he and his guests watched television reports "of an Arab victory and nothing from Israel." Then Engel got two phone calls in quick succession. One, from the Israeli Embassy in Washington, informed him that Israel had already won the war and needed no American intervention. The second was from Joseph Califano, special assistant to the president, and Engel never forgot his exact words: "Israel has won the greatest victory in the shortest campaign in all history."(54)

In the days that followed Israel captured the entire Sinai from Egypt, the West Bank and the old city of Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. The rally in Washington, originally intended to stimulate support for a beleaguered Israel, turned into a mass expression of relief at deliverance from potential catastrophe. Swept up in the enthusiasm, AJC broke loose from its old self-imposed constraints. Not only did some 100 AJC members from 24 communities participate in the Washington event, but Morris Abram was a featured speaker.(55) In an address of great eloquence, Abram placed the blame for the war on the Arab states, praised the American administration for its constructive role, and called on Israel's enemies to come to the bargaining table and make peace. And Abram sounded a note of transcendence that differed markedly from standard AJC prose. "When we were summoned here," he declared, "we did not foresee that tiny, encircled Israel would be able to overcome multiple fanatical adversaries equipped with Soviet arms. But the people of the Book have proved the verities of the Book: 'Not by power, nor by force, but by thy spirit, sayeth the Lord."(56)

Transformation

An energized AJC stepped up its activities in the wake of Israel's victory. The national office and the field staff monitored the media for anti-Semitic statements. Gearing up for the international pressure that would undoubtedly be placed on Israel from the communist bloc, the Arab world, and their sympathizers, AJC convened a meeting of prominent public-relations professionals to determine how the AJC might best present Israel's viewpoint to the world.(57) AJC also put together an outline of reaction in Western Europe and Latin America to the crisis, as well as a detailed analysis of Christian reaction which found that few Christian leaders had expressed solidarity with Israel.(58) AJC launched a public campaign to protect the Jews living in Arab countries who were undergoing a wave of persecution in the wake of the war; the Committee also arranged meetings with a number of foreign diplomats to urge them to get their governments to intervene with those Arab states.(59)

There had been no meeting of the Committee's lay leadership since the resolution on the Middle East was adopted at the AJC annual meeting on May 21, and it had largely been President Abram, elder statesmen like former presidents Blaustein and Engel, and the staff that had plunged the AJC headlong into the mainstream Jewish community's mobilization for Israel. A Board of Governors meeting scheduled for the evening of June 20 would indicate whether the leadership was willing to ratify the abandonment of AJC's traditional stance of "splendid isolation" in the Jewish organizational world and espouse the new emotional identification with the State of Israel.

The Board meeting provided high drama. After Abram and others reported on AJC activities, "the question was raised as to whether AJC's participation in the Washington DC rally was in keeping with its emphasis on effective action" ("effective action" was the traditional AJC euphemism for quiet diplomacy). Then Alan Stroock took the floor. Son of a former president of AJC and one of the prominent Committee figures who had flirted with the American Council for Judaism in the 1940s, he spoke for the old AJC that had never fully internalized the revolutionary changes wrought by the Holocaust and the founding of the Jewish state.(60) Stroock said that "never before in history has such an enormous part of the world been against Jews." He urged

that AJC proceed with extreme caution ... and expressed concern about the

extent to which AJC has committed itself, its constituents and the American

Jewish community to a position which identifies us, perhaps too strongly,

with Israel. The world is calling Israel a "conqueror," he said, and the

fate of five million Jews in the United States is being relegated to the

fate of two million Jews in Israel. For these reasons, he called for a

reassessment of AJC's role in this crisis.

Stroock was answered by John Slawson, who had recently announced his retirement after more than two decades as AJC executive vice president. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the slow but steady reorientation of the Committee from hostility toward Zionism and indifference toward Israel to acceptance and support. Declared Slawson, "We have a great stake in Israel; we were very important in its creation and recognition and we must now be concerned about its preservation." AJC's present task, he concluded, was helping Israel achieve a lasting peace.(61)

No vote was taken. The debate was over, and with it, the transformation of the American Jewish Committee. Some in AJC were willing to go even further than Slawson and suggest that American Jews had to help Israel not just because they had a hand in its creation but also because there was an aspect of being Jewish that transcended national boundaries. Speaking just a few days after the AJC board meeting at the NCRAC plenum--itself the quintessential forum of mainstream American Jewry--Morris Abram suggested that so many previously uninvolved American Jews had responded during the recent crisis because of the realization that "they do hold one thing in common with Jews everywhere in the world, and that is a peculiar vulnerability ... Jews do live on a precipice." But there was more than that. Departing from received AJC wisdom that American Jewish life was independent of Israel and indeed had much to teach the Jewish state about democracy and tolerance, Abram articulated another lesson of the war: "Jewish life in the Diaspora is inextricably intertwined with the survival of Jewish life in Israel. We now know that in a very profound and concrete way." He had arrived at the concept of Jewish peoplehood.(62)

Abram and five other top AJC leaders flew to Israel on July 8 for five days of meetings with government figures about the new situation in the Middle East. The AJC group conveyed to the Israelis the gist of what they had learned at the meeting at AJC headquarters with public relations experts: "Israel must appear to be a country which seeks peace through strength." Prime Minister Eshkol stressed to AJC leaders the importance of preventing outside (U.S.) pressures on Israel to make territorial concessions since such pressures would encourage the Arab world to maintain a posture of belligerence. Reporting on the trip to the Board of Governors, Theodore Tannenwald was "most emphatic about the importance of our not becoming involved in political questions and proposed solutions pertaining to the newly conquered territories" since it was up to Israel to formulate its own policy.(63)

The refusal to stake out an AJC position on territorial questions was soon put to the test. Assistant Secretary of State Eugene Rostow, Irving Engel's old friend, invited Engel to bring a small AJC delegation to meet with him in Washington. Accompanied by Tannenwald and Bertram Gold, the newly installed successor to John Slawson as executive vice president, Engel met with Rostow on August 10. Rostow told the AJC leaders that time was not necessarily on Israel's side since the Soviet Union was rearming the Arab states. It was to Israel's advantage, therefore, to get the Jordanians, at least, to the negotiating table. But this could only be done if Jordan were "given some kind of symbolic sovereign rights" in Jerusalem. Clearly the administration was seeking AJC help in exerting pressure on Israel. But the AJC leaders would not bite. They told Rostow that only the government of Israel could make such decisions. Furthermore, since the new unity of Jerusalem under Jewish control was of profound religious and historical meaning to all Jews, no Israeli government could survive if it caved in on the issue. They advised Rostow that the American Jewish community would surely take its lead from the Israelis on these matters and therefore further administration efforts to get American Jewish organizations to back a Jerusalem compromise were a waste of effort.(64)

The decision to allow the State of Israel full leeway in delineating its negotiating stance marked another crucial milestone in AJC history. After the Suez campaign in 1956 AJC acted as if it knew that Israel had miscalculated and sought to help it cut its losses by negotiating with the U.S. government. Things were different in 1967. Not only had the Committee abandoned its paternalism toward the Jewish state--the notion that it knew better than the Israeli government what was good for it--but AJC was also willing to turn down outright a feeler from the U.S. government that might be used to pressure Israel. Israel's dramatic military victory had immeasurably enhanced the wisdom and competence of Israel's government in the eyes of the AJC. It had also reinforced the Jewish pride of AJC leaders to the extent that they would disagree with their own government about what was in Israel's long-term interest.

Symbolically underlining AJC endorsement of the unification of Jerusalem, the Board of Governors voted in October 11967 to move the AJC Israel office from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and approved an appropriation to pay the salary of a full-time professional to work in the office of Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek on Arab-Jewish relations in the expanded city.(65) The Six-Day War also prompted changes in AJC programs not directly related to the geopolitics of the Middle East. A key shift occurred at the top. The new executive vice president, Bertram Gold, did not believe that the organization had sufficiently shed its old exclusiveness. He felt that the Committee "had to become more Jewish ... more involved in the mainstream of Jewish life."(66) This thrust was reflected throughout the agency. Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, director of interrellgious affairs, argued that the paucity of Christian support for Israel during the crisis was evidence that previous interfaith work had been misdirected, leaving Christians with the impression that Israel was a political, not a religious issue. Instead of concentrating so much on matters of theology and ethics, AJC work in this area would now make sure to educate non-Jews about the centrality of the Land of Israel within Judaism.(67) Yehuda Rosenman, hired just before the war to head the Jewish Communal Affairs Department, was the product of a traditional Jewish education in prewar Poland and, having worked for the Joint Distribution Committee in Israel for several years, spoke Hebrew fluently. In a departure from previous AJC patterns he instituted programs geared to enhance the Jewish knowledge of AJC members, stress traditional Jewish values as against contemporary secular trends, and strengthen the ties between American and Israeli Jews even to the point of praising aliyah.(68) In 1968, recognizing just how central Israel was becoming to the entire work of the organization, AJC instituted an annual month-long summer seminar In Israel for staff members." AJC's Israel office, while not explicitly repudiating its original mandate to help the Israelis "shape up," tended increasingly to organize programs for American and Israeli Jews to discuss together their respective understandings of Jewish identity in an atmosphere of mutual respect.(70) And although the AJC never officially stated that it was dropping its "non-Zionist" identity, it stopped using the term.

Bert Gold did not exaggerate at the 1968 annual meeting when he said the war "made for some profound changes in our work." Another profound change occurred at the meeting itself. The close brush with disaster the year before evoked the first serious AJC encounter with the implications of the Holocaust. Dr. Irving Greenberg delivered a talk, "Cloud by Day, Fire by Night--the Future of American Jewry in Light of the Holocaust and Israel," which, in an enlarged form, would become an early classic of Holocaust theology.(71) Greenberg engaged the AJC directly. The fact that the organization could "discuss the question of Jewish identity without fear that it will lose its credentials as a liberal organization" demonstrated the impact of the Six-Day War, he said. The AJC and American Jewry as a whole had shed the fear of dual loyalty and had learned that the Jewish state could "restore dignity and decency to Jewish and human life."(72)

The annual meeting that year marked Israel's twentieth anniversary with a resolution reflecting sentiments that would have been anathema before 1967:

The overwhelming and spontaneous response of American Jewry when Israel

was threatened last year has made manifest to all the deep personal

attachment and the profound sense of a shared history and destiny that

organically connect American Jews to Israel.(73)

The AJC activities report for 1967-8 differed markedly from its predecessor the year before. In 1966-7, "Israel" was on page 35, yielding pride of place to "The Spirit of Ecumenism," executive suite discrimination, civil rights, extremism and anti-Semitism, church-state separation, Jewish identity, and reports on Europe, the Soviet bloc, and Latin America. For 1967-8, Israel was the lead item, and there it remained.(74)

The new centrality of Israel for AJC programming was also manifested in budgetary terms. By 1971 Israel-related costs of all AJC activities were estimated at 2.1 percent of the entire budget, and this was raised to 29 percent in the projected budget for 1973. Top AJC staff, however, told a researcher that the actual percentage spent on Israel-related matters that "may not be categorizable as such in budget digests" was between 25 and 50 percent. One senior staff member said, "Community relations around Israel and the Middle East is the number one subject in the AJ Committee." Another commented that "Israel figures in almost everything we do."(75)

The price for moving into the mainstream was the loss of much of AJC's distinctiveness, especially noticeable when it came to Israel. After 1967 members and staff no longer perceived AJC as relating any differently to Israel than did the rest of the American Jewish community.(76) In the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine and a noted pro-Israel hardliner, suggested in the New York Times that "non-Zionism has grown even weaker than anti-Zionism." As for AJC, the old embodiment of non-Zionism,

to the extent that its non-Zionist heritage can still be felt, it takes the

highly attenuated form of an effort to pursue an independent line on matters

affecting Israel rather than according automatic support to whatever

policies the government of Israel might adopt. For the rest, the American

Jewish Committee today is at least as fervent in its devotion to Israel as

the Zionist organizations themselves.(77)

After 1967, then, one can no longer speak of a unique American Jewish Committee stance toward Israel. Whatever forces-positive or negative-shape the relationship of the Jewish state to the American Jewish community as a whole affect AJC's orientation as well.

(1.) The research for this essay was done while on a sabbatical leave generously granted by the American Jewish Committee. Helen Ritter and Ruth Rauch of the AJC Records Center and Cyma Horowitz and Michele Anish of the Blaustein Library provided invaluable help in locating material. Since no one in the AJC attempted in any way to influence the interpretations in this article, the author alone takes responsibility for them.

(2.) Arthur Hertzberg, "Israel and American Jewry," Commentary (August 1967), 69.

(3.) Milton Himmelfarb, "In the Light of Israel's Victory," Commentary (October 1967), 53-61; Lucy S. Dawidowicz, "American Public Opinion," American Jewish Year Book, 1968 (New York and Philadelphia, 1968), 203-24; Leon Jick, Abraham J. Klausner, and Alieser Livneh, "American Jewry and Israel's Victory: Aftermath and Opportunity," Dimensions in American Judaism (Winter 1967-68), 17-24; Marshall Sklare, "Lakeville and Israel: The Six-Day War and Its Aftermath," Midstream (October 11968), 3-21; Robert Silverberg, If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem: The Dramatic Story of How American Jews and the United States Helped Create Israel (New York, 1970), 1-110, 561-82; Naomi W. Cohen, American Jews and the Zionist Idea (New York, 11975), ch. 9; Melvin I. Urofsky, "We Are One": American Jewry and Israel (Garden City, 1978), ch.14.; Leonard Fein, "Failing God: American Jews and the Six-Day War," in The Impact of the Six-Day War, ed. Stephen J. Roth (New York, 1988), ch. 116; Howard Morley Sachar, A History of the Jews in America (New York, 1992), ch. 20; Edward S. Shapiro, A Time for Healing: American Jewry Since World War II (Baltimore, 1992), 207-08.

(4.) The only exception known to the author is Menahem Kaufman, "From Philanthropy to Commitment: The Six Day War and the United Jewish Appeal," The Journal of Israeli History (Summer 1994), 161-91.

(5.) The discussion here is based on Naomi W. Cohen, Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906-1966 (Philadelphia, 1972.), and Menahem Kaufman, An Ambiguous Partnership: Non-Zionists and Zionists in America, 1939-1948 (Jerusalem and Detroit, 1991).

(6.) On the formation and early years of the Council see Thomas A. Kolsky, Jews against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism, 194.2-194 8 (Philadelphia, 1990).

(7.) Avraham Harman, Israel's ambassador in Washington at the time, noted that Blaustein knew "every move in the game." Harman Interview, 19-20, Jacob Blaustein Collection, AJC Oral History Library (OHL), New York Public Library. Golda Meir recalled times when Blaustein had better access to the American administration than Israel's own diplomats did. Meir Interview, 5, Jacob Blaustein Collection, OHL.

(8.) Proceedings of the Fifty-Second Annual Meeting of the American Jewish Committee, 84.

(9.) Eugene DuBow Interview, 1/38, 42-3, AJC OHL.

(10.) Stuart Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York, 1997), surveys these trends in AJC programming as well as parallel developments within the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the American Jewish Congress.

(11.) Nathan Perlmutter to George Salomon, September 8, 1966, AJC Archives, JSX/66/ Israel.

(12.) Helmuth S. Lowenberg Interview, 3, Jacob Blaustein Collection, AJC OHL, Irving Engel Interview, 2/12, 3/4, AJC OHL. Also see the similar sentiments in Morris B. Abram Interview, 8/315, and Gerard Weinstock Interview, 2/83, AJC OHL.

(13.) George E. Gruen Interview, 1/32, Stanford M. Adelstein Interview, 1/38-39, AJC OHL.

(14.) Leon Rabin Interview, 1/42, AJC OHL.

(15.) Eugene DuBow Interview, 1/40, AJC OHL.

(16.) Cohen, Not Free to Desist, 323-4; Irving M. Engel Interview, 2/16, AJC OHL.

(17.) See, for example, Committee Reporter (May 1960), 9-11, 44; American Jewish Year Book, 1962, 284-5.

(18.) Proceedings of the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the American Jewish Committee, 107-09.

(19.) Proceedings of the Fifty-Second Annual Meeting of the American Jewish Committee, 69.

(20.) Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York, 1993), 330-2; American Jewish Committee, "The Eichmann Case: Moral Questions and Legal Arguments," April 1961, Blaustein Library VF "Israel/Eichmann Trial/AJC"; Remarks of AJC President Herbert Ehrmann, Committee Reporter (May 1961), 27.

(21.) Irving M. Engel Interview, 3/3-4, AJC OHL.

(22.) Morris B. Abram Interview, 7/293-94, AJC OHL; Morris B. Abram, The Day Is Short: An Autobiography (New York, 1981), 75-6, 142.

(23.) American Jewish Year Book, 1955, 631.

(24.) Council News, February 1951, 20-1; April 1951, 25; August 19511, 15-9; November 11951, 8-10; December 1951, 11; March 1951, 14-6; August 1956, 1-2; October 1956, 11-6; November 1956, 9-11; March 1957, 1-7; Issues, Winter 1962-3, 1637; Clarence L. Coleman, Jr., to A. M. Sonnabend, February 13, 1963; Sonnabend to Coleman, March 19, 1963; Coleman to Morris B. Abram, April 9, 1964; Abram to Clarence Coleman, April 9, 1963; AJC Archives, JSX/63-67/ACJ.

(25.) Stanford Adelstein Interview, 1/38; Leon Rabin Interview, 1/42-43, AJC OHL; "Some Questions Commonly Asked of the American Jewish Committee by Members of the American Council for Judaism," typescript, March 1956, Blaustein Library of the American Jewish Committee, VF "American Council for Judaism/AJC."

(26.) American Jewish Year Book, 1951, 124.

(27.) Both publications are in the Blaustein Library VF, "American Council for Judaism/ AJC."

(28.) Naomi W. Cohen, Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906-1966 (Philadelphia, 1972), 555.

(29.) Minutes of the Committee on National Growth Meeting, May 4, 1962, 4, AJC Archives, CAD/Constituency[National Growth Committee/62-3.

(30.) Proceedings, Meeting of the Executive Board of the American Jewish Committee, May 16, 1963, 51, Blaustein Library.

(31.) Social Research, Inc., "The image, Role and Potential of the AJC" (May 1963), 109, 28.

(32.) Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., Interview, 2/85, AJC OHL.

(33.) George E. Gruen Interview, 1/5-6, AJC OHL.

(34.) Minutes of the Board of Governors, December 7, 1965.

(35.) Proceedings of the Fifty-Third Annual Meeting of the American Jewish Committee, 38-41.

(36.) George E. Gruen Interview, 1/12, AJC OHL. Naomi Cohen lists the three original purposes of the Israel office as follows: "to arrest the narrow parochialism of the younger generation of Israelis; to guard against a possible `de-Judaization' of Israel; and to build up the cultural reserves within the state to withstand the forces of Levantinization." Cohen, Not Free to Desist, 329.

(37.) Committee Reporter, May 1962, 8-9, 30-1; July 196z, 22-3, 40-1.

(38.) Morris B. Abram to Members of the Board of Delegates, September I, 1964, AJC Archives, JSX 64/Israel/"In Vigilant Brotherhood."

(39.) Proceedings of the Fifty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Jewish Committee, 40.

(40.) AJC had only recently rejoined NCRAC after staying outside it since 1952.

(41.) George E. Gruen to Areas Directors and Executive Assistants, December 1, 1966, AJC Archives, FA/MID/Conf. of Pres.

(42.) Proceedings of the Sixty-First Meeting of the American Jewish Committee, 116-7; Morris B. Abram to President Johnson and Secretary of State Rusk, telegram, May 21. 1967; Jacob Blaustein to President Lyndon B. Johnson, telegram, May 23., 1967, AJC Archives, JSX/Middle East/Arab-Israel Conflict/ 5/67-7/67.

(43.) Jacob Blaustein to Dr. John Slawson, May 17, 1967; Minutes of Special Leadership Meeting on Middle East Crisis, June 5, 1967, 1-3, both ibid.; Dean Rusk Interview, 8, Jacob Blaustein Collection, AJC OHL.

(44.) Proceedings of the Sixty-First Annual Meeting of the American Jewish Committee, 102.

(45.) American Jewish Year Book, 1967 79-81.

(46.) The American Jewish Committee Newsletter, January-February 1966, 3.

(47.) Ibid., May-June 1966, 5.

(48.) Morris B. Abram to AJC Chapter and Unit Chairmen, May 26, 1967; Isaiah Minkoff to NCRAC Membership, May 29, 1967, both in AJC Archives, BGX/Middle East/ Arab-Israel Conflict/67.

(49.) Samuel Katz to Area Directors and Executive Assistants, June 5, 1967, ibid.

(50.) Morris B. Abram to AJC Membership, June 5, 1967, ibid.

(51.) Abram, The Day Is Short, 150. Strauss, an investment banker, rear admiral, and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, was President Eisenhower's unsuccessful nominee to be Secretary of Commerce in 1959.

(52.) John Slawson Interview, 2/30, AJC OHL.

(53.) Special Leadership Meeting on Middle East Crisis, June 5, 1967, AJC Archives, JSX/Middle East/Arab-Israel Conflict/5/67-7/67. This is marked "STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL."

(54.) Irving M. Engel Interview, 3/35-36, AJC OHL.

(55.) Samuel Katz to Nathan Perlmutter, June 16, 1967, AJC Archives, JSX/Middle East/Arab-Israel Conflict/5/67-7/67. Eugene DuBow, director of the Westchester chapter, described them as "absolutely euphoric." DuBow Interview, 1/42., AJC OHL.

(56.) Text of Address of Morris B. Abram, President of the American Jewish Committee, as delivered in Washington on June 8, 1967, AJC Archives, JSX/Middle East/Arab-Israel Conflict/5/67-7/67.

(57.) Isaiah Terman to Area Directors, June 9, 1967, ibid.; "A New Look: Victorious Israel and American Public Opinion," American Jewish Committee Newsletter, May-July 1967, 2-3; Summary of Meeting on Public Relations and the Middle East, July 6, 1967, AJC Archives, JSX/Middle East/Arab-Israel Conflict/ 5/67-7/67.

(58.) "Reactions in Western Europe and Latin America to the Situation in the Middle East, May-June 1967"; Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum to Dr. John Slawson, June 20, 1967, both ibid. For detailed reports by AJC staff on the reactions of Christian clergy in Los Angeles and New York see Neil C. Sandberg to Will Katz, June 13, 1967, and Elliot Knauer to Israel Laster, June 16, 1967, ibid.

(59.) AJC Press Release, June 23, 1967, attached to "Summary of Information Concerning the Situation of Jewish Communities in Arab Countries"; Simon Segal to Dr. John Slawson, June 21, 1967, both ibid.; "AJC Acts to Aid Jews in Arab Countries," special supplement to AJC Newsletter, December 1967.

(60.) Kolsky, Jews against Zionism, 58.

(61.) Minutes of the Board of Governors, June 20, 1967, 5-6.

(62.) Implications of the Middle East Crisis for American Jewish Community Relations: Assessment and Projection, Proceedings of the NCRAC Plenary, June 29-July 2, 1967, 4-5; Abram, The Day Is Short, 141

(63.) Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Governors, August 2, 1967.

(64.) "Report on Meeting with Eugene Rostow and Lucius Battle on Thursday, August 10, 1967," AJC Archives, BGX/Middle East/Arab-Israeli Conflict/67-8.

(65.) Minutes of the Board of Governors Meeting, October 3, 1967, 2-3.

(66.) Bert Gold Interview, p. 89, AJC OHL.

(67.) Marc H. Tanenbaum, "Israel's Hour of Need and the Jewish-Christian Dialogue," Conservative Judaism (Winter 1968), 1-18; Judith Hershcopf Banki, Christian Reaction to the Middle East Crisis: New Agenda for Religious Dialogue (AJC, December 1967).

(68.) Steven Bayme, ed., Facing the Future: Essays on Contemporary Jewish Life (New York, 1989), xvii-xxvi.

(69.) Eugene DuBow Interview, 1/42, Morris Fine Interview, 14, AJC OHL. Fine, a veteran staff member, suggested that the program was less about Israel per se than "inculcating and developing and intensifying one's Jewishness."

(70.) George E. Gruen Interview, 1/10-14, ibid.

(71.) Eva Fleischner, ed., Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? Reflections on the Holocaust (New York, 1977), 7-55.

(72.) Proceedings of the Sixty-Second Annual Meeting of the American Jewish Committee, May 23-26, 1968, 13, 71, 80, 88.

(73.) Ibid., 147.

(74.) This Year's Activities, 1966-67 and successive years, available in the Blaustein Library.

(75.) Gary S. Schiff, "American Jews and Israel," Forum on the Jewish People, Zionism and Israel (1976:1), 24-25.

(76.) Stanford Adelstein Interview, 1/46; George E. Gruen Interview, 1/11-12; John Slawson Interview, 3/41, AJC OHL.

(77.) Norman Podhoretz, "Now, Instant Zionism," New York Times Magazine, February 3) 1974, 37.