Why I Was a Zionist and Why I Now Am Not

An actor reads “Why I Was a Zionist and Why I Now Am Not”:

Forces are moving about us in the world that may determine your future and mine; certainly the future of our children: secularism, nationalism with its sinister emphasis on blood and brutality, the tragic loss of human liberty gained through the centuries at the cost of treasure and life, the elevation of the totalitarian state and its juggernaut, ruthless crushing of the human personality. Has Reform Judaism anything to say about these things?

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Host Aaron Henne: Welcome to Episode Two of the third season of theatre dybbuk’s The Dybbukast. I'm Aaron Henne, artistic director of theatre dybbuk. In this episode, presented in collaboration with the Jewish Museum of Maryland, we share selections from a speech by Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron, which was given at the convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1937. Portions of this speech are featured, along with excerpts from his unpublished autobiography, in an article from the Jewish Museum of Maryland's journal, Generations. The article is titled “Why I Was a Zionist and Why I Now Am Not”.

A prominent and nationally known leader affiliated with the Reform Movement, Morris S. Lazaron served as rabbi for Baltimore Hebrew Congregation from 1915 through much of 1946, and later as rabbi emeritus. He was also among the group of Reform rabbis who founded the American Council for Judaism in 1942. The Council sought to offer a vision of Jewish identity that was not connected to nationalism, and it initially opposed the establishment of the state of Israel. At the top, you heard actor Jon Weinberg read a section from Rabbi Lazaron’s speech. Throughout the episode, Jon will read additional selections from the speech, the content of which gives us an entry point to investigate the ideas of the American Council for Judaism.

And now, Season Three, Episode Two, “Why I Was a Zionist and Why I Now Am Not”.

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Dr. Matt Berkman: The American Council for Judaism is, I think, a pretty fascinating organization, if only because of how unfamiliar most American Jews today would find its politics and its worldview. The Council was an anti-Zionist organization founded in 1942, really at the height of American Zionist advocacy for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Aaron: That was Dr. Matt Berkman, Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio. Matt shared with us about the Council and the historical forces surrounding its inception and trajectory of change.

Matt: But the ideas that the Council championed were actually pretty old, and they went back to the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform of the Reform Jewish Movement. Reform Judaism, both in America and in Germany, where it originally got started, sought to reform Judaism as it had been practiced before the legal emancipation of European Jews in the 19th century. And the goal of Reform Judaism was to make Jewish religious practice more compatible with citizenship in a modern nation state. On the political level, the early reformers were very interested in making sure that Judaism — Jewishness — was understood as only a religious creed, not a separate race or a separate nation or anything else that would mark Jews off as different or other, and, for that reason, the Pittsburgh Platform stated pretty clearly…

Actor 2: We consider ourselves no longer a nation but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

Matt: This position — this non-Zionist or anti-Zionist position that was very characteristic of early, or what they call Classical Reform Judaism — this didn't stick around for the entirety of the history of Reform Judaism.

Actor 1: Jews and Judaism are in and of the world of men. Feel the impact of the surging currents of our time. There are movements in Jewish life of vast portent for Jews everywhere, particularly in America. Has Reform Judaism anything to say about them?

Rabbi Andy Busch: Baltimore Hebrew Congregation was the first, and is therefore the oldest, synagogue of any kind in the state of Maryland as a whole.

Aaron: That was Rabbi Andy Busch, current rabbi of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. He talked with us about the congregation's founding, Rabbi Lazaron’s tenure, and the ways in which the synagogue community has continued to evolve.

Andy: For those people not within Maryland itself, it's kind of strange to know that at the beginning of our country, it was actually illegal for Jews in Maryland — non-Christians — to gather together and charter a house of worship, just like it was illegal to run for office. And in the mid-1820s, a series of bills and legislation went on that enabled Jews to do those things. A bill passed the Maryland state legislature called the Jew Bill. We would not be happy with that title today. And we were the first congregation in the state of Maryland in 1830, and across the 19th century we transitioned from being a more traditional congregation to being a Reform Jewish congregation. Rabbi Lazaron comes to us at the start of World War I. Morris Lazaron is ordained at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He spends about a year in West Virginia, and then is brought to Baltimore Hebrew Congregation as our first American-born rabbi in the history of the congregation.

Peggy Wolf: This was a man who grew up in Savannah, Georgia; whose mother could trace her Sephardic background back to the synagogue wall in Toledo.

Aaron: That’s Peggy Wolf, granddaughter of Rabbi Lazaron. She told us about her grandfather's life and the legacy of the lessons he imparted.

Peggy: My grandfather married the daughter of the president of the congregation in Wheeling. Her name was Pauline Horkheimer, and they moved nine months later to Baltimore. Baltimore Hebrew Congregation is the fifth oldest congregation in the country, and it was a much larger pulpit for my grandfather. He spoke nationally, and so people knew of my grandfather in the sense that he was the rabbi who was invited to represent Jews of this country at the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Matt: Rabbi Lazaron, a minister, and a Catholic priest travel around America talking about tolerance, and talking about inter-religious learning and understanding. So they're not talking about worship together or necessarily even deeply theological explorations as much as they are simply talking about accepting one another.

Actor 3: New York Times, August 30th, 1933: A Roman Catholic priest, a rabbi, and a Presbyterian clergyman, it was announced yesterday, are planning to leave New York in November on a nationwide tour to promote better understanding among Catholics, Jews, and Protestants.

Peggy: I think it is very hard for people in 2022 to imagine how shocking that was in 1933, to have a Jew and a Catholic and a Protestant minister, each of their own faith, travel and show that they had more in common than that which held them apart.

Matt: He travels again with a minister and a priest to what was then Palestine together as part of their journey and their relationship. And all of that work was part of the founding of what was then called the National Conference for Christians and Jews, an organization very much towards furthering that interfaith understanding, acceptance. I think it both came from his own theological heart and emotional heart, but was also an activity related to Jews finding their place in this country, right? And he doesn't reference antisemitism in these efforts, but it is an attempt to have Jews accepted, and his own people, his own family, his own congregation accepted in Baltimore, and then nationally.

Peggy: My mother talked all the time about the number of people who were brought into her home. My mother's mother died — Polly Lazaron died when my mom was eight. And so until the time she married, my mother ran a household of a rabbi, who had both local and national and some international connections, and she recalls very important people of many different religions and races coming into her house.

Matt: He was originally a Zionist, or was at least friendly to Zionism, up until the late — or mid — or late 1930s. Basically around the same time period that many American Jews were converting to Zionism, he converted out of Zionism because he became very convinced that after — especially after visiting Nazi Germany — he became very convinced that nationalism writ large was the threat, the major threat, to humanity.

Actor 1: The world has gone mad on nationalism.

Matt: And that for him included Jewish nationalism.

Actor 1: The cruel fate of our people, particularly in Germany, together with the rise of nationalism, has moved a number of Jewish leaders, veterans in the Jewish cause, to lift the banner of Jewish secular and diaspora nationalism.

Matt: And so he basically turned back to the original kind of anti-nationalist creed of Classical Reform Judaism and decided to champion that.

Actor 1: They say two things. One, the plight of German Jewry shows the failure of the emancipation. Two, the only hope for the Jew is the development everywhere of an intense Jewish nationalism, which centers in Palestine. I deny both assertions. To declare that German Jewry was assimilated, that it sold its birthright, that it consciously attempted to lose its identity, is not true. It is a libel upon the noble institutions and the rich creative, literary, scholarly, and artistic Jewish life of pre-Hitler Germany. To follow this libel with the further assertion: “You see what happened? They tried it and they failed. Therefore, integration everywhere is doomed to failure,” is to add misrepresentation to libel.

Matt: Early 1942 — February — the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which was the main Reform rabbinical organization, passed a resolution at its annual assembly calling for the creation of a Jewish army to fight with the Allies in World War II. And this bothered a kind of vocal minority within the Reform rabbinate at the time.

Actor 3: New York Times, March 16th, 1942: Asserting that American Jewish opinion is sharply divided on the question of creating a Jewish army in Palestine, 63 rabbis from many parts of the country issued a statement yesterday declaring that such an army would cause misunderstanding throughout the world and lead to further friction in Palestine.

Matt: At the time, this endorsement of a Jewish army seemed to them too much of a departure from Classical Reform Judaism's anti-nationalist position, or at least anti-Jewish nationalist position, and too much of a shift in the direction of Zionism or a political understanding of what it meant to be a Jew.

Actor 1: There is a compelling dynamic in nationalism; something gripping, profoundly moving. It makes the pulse beat faster. You’ve felt it; I’ve felt it – in great gatherings for some Jewish cause. But if we accept Torah, our tradition, our full inheritance as our dynamic, then we must realize its implications.

Matt: So in 1942, Morris Lazaron was among the set of rabbis that reacted negatively to the CCAR, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, passing that resolution for a Jewish military force. And he issued with them an invitation to rabbis from around the country to form an alternative organization. And that organization was the American Council for Judaism.

Actor 1: This is no time for retreat, when the world is tearing itself to pieces in its denial of God. This is the hour to go forward.

Matt: The Council didn't remain a purely rabbinical organization for very long because the same shifts towards Zionism in American Jewish life that motivated the Council’s rabbinic members also alarmed a minority of the prominent Jewish lay people at the time, and especially those well-to-do and highly acculturated Jews of kind of central European heritage, and they attempted to play down any kind of hard cultural boundaries that might exist between Jews and non-Jews with the — maybe the fear in mind that playing up those boundaries would cost them their social economic position. Many decided to join the Council, and it soon became a lay organization with some rabbinic members.

Actor 3: New York Times, May 7th, 1945: Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union at 2:41 AM French time today. The surrender took place at a little red school house that is the headquarters of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. It brought the war in Europe to a formal end after five years, eight months, and six days of bloodshed and destruction.

Andy: Rabbi Lazaron retires fairly young from the pulpit. Immediately following the war, his close colleague and friend, Rabbi Morris Lieberman, who was a staunch Zionist, takes over. He had been the assistant rabbi, and the two of them, to everything I've ever read and heard, maintained a very close relationship ‘till, really, Rabbi Lieberman died in 1970, actually at 61 years old. Rabbi Lazaron, after he retires, continues to share in leading High Holiday services and to, at other large events and occasional moments, deliver sermons. A couple of years after his retirement from the senior rabbi position, being a non-Zionist becomes even a less popular position within the life of the congregation and the community, and he steps down from any responsibilities within the congregation.

Actor 1: Let no one think this decision is an easy one. It is easier to yield to the trend of the times and follow the mob.

Andy: As this friction was building up in the ‘40s about his position, he was one of the only people in the congregation who had probably been to Israel actually — been to Palestine at that moment.

Matt: The American Council for Judaism — even after the state of Israel was founded in 1948, they continued to see Zionism as a threat to Judaism, to American Jews. They continued to believe that a Jewish state and the behavior of its officials and its supporters in the United States would harm Jews by stimulating the belief among Gentiles that Jews were foreigners, that they were a separate nation — a separate race — and they believed that this would generally increase antisemitism. And after 1948, its activities were basically devoted to expressing strong opposition to the idea that American Zionist organizations represented all Jews. They wanted to really forcefully assert that American Jews had a variety of opinions, and that they believed that the Zionist view was wrong.

Peggy: I think the real irony about the issue of Zionism with my grandfather is that what I was taught as a child was that there are many definitions of Zionism, and that the one I grew up with learning was that one could be a Jew, could identify with Israel, but not feel that it had to be your homeland. There was a very clear definition made that there was a difference between race and religion. And that there were issues of nationalism that had precipitated my grandfather's thinking, which, when you look at the current political situation, issues of nationalism have not gone away.

Matt: We had in the Council a group that was opposed to Zionism for reasons that were — you know, it's ironic that they were anti-Jewish nationalists, but they were American nationalists, and they wanted to be part of the American nation, and what we have today is different. We don't have Jews in America saying we shouldn't support Israel because Israel is a foreign nation, and allegiance to a foreign nation renders us suspect in the eyes of Americans. The idea of dual loyalty, although it still exists and is a trope thrown around by antisemites, it's not a live political discourse the way it was in the nineteen-teens, 1920s, the period when many of the original members of the council were coming up in their careers, in their lives.

Actor 1: No believing Jew can be a communist. You hate the communist today. Tomorrow, it will be the Jew. The next day, the Protestant and the Catholic. In the end, that fire will consume everything that is free, liberal, and fine.

Matt: The anti-Zionism, non-Zionism, among Jews that we're seeing today is really rooted in a concept of human rights that the Council just wasn't working with, didn't have access to. You know, human rights as a kind of a political discourse, didn't develop traction until after World War II, and really since the 1970s. The position of the American Council for Judaism — their cultural position or their interpretation of what Jewishness is, is also very foreign to American Jews today. The idea that American Jews are just a religion with no ethnic content, nothing ancestral, nothing cultural that really differentiates them from other Americans —this is kind of a bizarre notion today. The American Council for Judaism came up in a period where American white Anglo supremacy in matters of culture and politics were relatively unquestioned, and they were doing what they could to make Jewish life work under those conditions.

Peggy: He continued to be good friends with many of the people who were involved in the Council, but truly, from what I've heard from my mother, and my father particularly, who was probably a little more balanced about his view than the rabbi's daughter, was that my grandfather really moved on to issues of segregation. He was really horrified and upset by what he saw going on in this country.

Actor 1: Ours is but one segment of the world tragedy. Our own sorrow must make us cognizant of the sorrow of other groups and nations, colors and classes, of all creeds and of no creed. The battle is for the right of the Jew or anyone else to live anywhere, enjoying the full privileges of citizenship as long as he obeys the law.

Peggy: My grandfather truly preached a concern for one another, and so Rabbi Lieberman, who followed him, had the foundation for a congregation that then acted as the leaders in the desegregation of Baltimore.

Andy: My next meeting today is with a group of ministers and priests working together to try to combat racism in Baltimore specific. I actually at the end of next month step down as the president of the Baltimore Jewish Council. The Baltimore Jewish Council — our Jewish community’s community relations council — was actually founded by Rabbi Morris Lieberman, right; Rabbi Lazaron's successor, protégé in some ways. And it was established in many ways to involve ourselves in the larger world around us, both for the sake of the larger world and for the sake of the Jewish community.

Actor 1: We are but one of the casualties in a war for the redemption of humanity. And that war will go on.

Matt: The American Council for Judaism — some of its members, like Rabbi Lazaron, had a kind of message that is still appealing in some ways. The idea that Judaism articulates a message that is not for just one people, but that is for the entirety of humanity, and that the special kind of mission of Jews is to help communicate this universal message. And it's really a message not so much of the rabbis that had developed Judaism through the Talmud, but the Judaism of the prophets and the prophetic texts, the voice against injustice, the voice for a better world, and the voice that really inclines against particularistic nationalisms that are petty and brutal and narrow of any kind.

Actor 1: In the face of the brutalizing nationalism of our times, we must cry out the universal message of Israel. Not the blood cult, state cult, hate cult, war cult of nationalism, but one humanity on earth as there is one God in heaven. That is the meaning of the great Oleinu and the high challenge of the holiest Yom HaKippurim.

Matt: I wrote about the development of the so-called Pro-Israel Consensus that is pinned usually to 1967. And the traditional story of the Pro-Israel Consensus is that American Jews — yes, they were happy when Israel was founded in 1948. They were relieved that Holocaust survivors would have a place to go that would make them safe. But the major institutions that govern the American Jewish community didn't shift their programmatic activities so much in favor of pro-Israel advocacy until 1967. The idea is that 1967 changed things. Why? Because Israel was seen to be coming under kind of an existential threat. There was widespread fear that a second Holocaust was gonna happen, and this kind of reoriented the mindset of American Jews staunchly behind Israel. I — in my dissertation, I kind of challenged this a little. In 1948, the American Jewish community was not as well institutionalized as it was in 1967. There were some national organizations, but until the ‘50s and ‘60s, there wasn't a widespread American Jewish political infrastructure as was built in the period between the two wars, ‘48 and ‘67. And so by 1967, there was this very networked, top-down political apparatus that could advocate for Israel at this point, where there was a sense of need, a sense of trauma that resulted from the war, and really the weeks leading up to the war, where it was thought that Israel would not survive the war, even though, of course, as we know, historically, it vanquished its enemies pretty quickly and came out very powerful — a US military ally in the Middle East. And that infrastructure that had been built really allowed for the transmission of this new pro-Israel culture and ideology throughout the entire country.

Peggy: He left Baltimore and he first went to Rollins College. He taught divinity students, and one of his students was Mr. Rogers. And I have this wonderful letter that Mr. Rogers wrote my mother when my grandfather died about the influence that my grandfather had on his life. My grandfather took up painting. My grandmother was able to get him lessons, and they traveled to Paris.

Andy: Rabbi Lazaron didn't live in Baltimore for the most part after he retired. That was, I think, less about the congregation and more about wanting to move to North Carolina and paint and be in New York some.

Matt: The Council lost membership in the 1970s and ‘80s as most American Jews, you know, turned away from this kind of ideological cultural position that they held and embraced Israel.

You know, in my preparation for this interview, I, I looked through my archive of writings about the American Council for Judaism — writings about, or by them — and I came across a 1977 New York Times letter to the editor from Rabbi Lazaron.

Actor 1: To the editor of The New York Times…

Matt: A lot of council members did attempt after 1948 to draw a distinction between, you know, the state of Israel, which they didn't want to see destroyed, and that they wanted to see Its people, who were Jews, of course, be prosperous and happy and safe. And, on the other hand, Zionism, which they saw as kind of a transnational ideology that sought to kind of racialize Jews and make them appear other in the eyes of other Americans.

Actor 1: The Zionist hope that all Jews will return to Israel is fantasy. The American Jewish community is deeply rooted in the American scene economically, artistically, and socially.

Matt: So, knowing all that, it didn't really surprise me, but Lazaron's 1977 article, basically, you know, expressed strong support for the continued existence and safety of the state of Israel. It expressed a cognizance that there was an American Jewish consensus about Israel.

Actor 1: Since Israel has been established, I have not written or spoken a word in criticism of, or opposition to, Israel. I ardently believe the destruction of Israel would be one of the greatest tragedies in world history, and I fervently endorse our country's support of the state, morally, emotionally, economically, as well as politically.

Matt: He embraced that consensus, while at the same time also noting that Jews were divided on how Israel could go about securing its existence and what particular steps the United States should take towards that.

Actor 1: All Jews are united in the determination that Israel must survive. We are not united as to the means to achieve this. The worst thing that could happen would be for the administration to say, “A plague on both your houses.”

Matt: So it had come around to what today you might characterize as the liberal Zionist position. You know, liberal Zionists obviously today would call for a two-state solution. And he mentioned in his op-ed — which, again, was in 1977, which is fairly early on — he mentioned that the UN Partition Plan of 1947 actually called for the creation of both a Jewish state and an Arab state.

Actor 1: It should never be forgotten that the original United Nations resolution called for the

establishment of two states, a Zionist state and an Arab state.

Matt: The two-state solution wasn't really truly embraced by the majority of the American Jewish political world until after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, so he was a little bit prescient there.

Actor 1: American Jews should know that there's more criticism of Israeli policy among Israelis than among Jews in this country. To achieve lasting peace, flexibility by both sides is in order. The situation demands less unbridled emotion and more objective thinking. — Morris S. Lazaron, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, September 9th, 1977.

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Aaron: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Dybbukast, “Why I Was a Zionist and Why I Now Am Not”. Selections from Rabbi Lazaron’s writings were read by actor Jon Weinberg. Additional readings were performed by Julie Lockhart and Mark McClain Wilson. Thank you to Dr. Matt Berkman, Rabbi Andy Busch and Peggy Wolf for sharing their insights. Our theme music is composed by Michael Skloff and produced by Sam K.S. Story editing on this episode was led by Julie Lockhart with support from me, Aaron Henne. This episode was edited by Mark McClain Wilson.

Thank you to Mark Gunnery at the Jewish Museum of Maryland who identified Rabbi Lazaron and his writings as a match for The Dybbukast’s explorations. Thanks also to Sol Davis at the museum for his partnership and support. Please visit us at theatredybbuk.org where you will find links to a wide variety of materials which expand upon the episode’s explorations. And if you want to know more about theatre dybbuk’s work in general, please sign up for our mailing list on that same website.

This season is generously supported by a grant from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. This episode was presented in collaboration with the Jewish Museum of Maryland. Information about that organization and its programs can be found at jewishmuseummd.org. On that website, you can listen to the Museum's podcast, Disloyal, which can also be found wherever you get your podcasts. The Dybbukast is produced by theatre dybbuk.

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Actor 1: We are discussing philosophies of Jewish life and programs of Jewish action in a tragic time. The fundamental issue in which good Jews are interested is, what is the best and the Jewish thing to do. If this address brings us to earnest thinking about the situation, it will have served its purpose for I have no doubt that wisdom will be sustained in the end.