In this 1958 letter, Philip M. Klutznick, president of B’nai B’rith, warned Mordecai Kaplan that Kaplan would have to “… give a new meaning in the modern context to the word ‘Zionism.’ ”
This is a surprising recommendation from an American Zionist leader to an influential Jewish thinker shaped deeply by Zionist ideology 10 years after the establishment of the Jewish state. Why the need for a new meaning of Zionism?
Klutznick wrote to Kaplan following Kaplan’s presentation of a report to the Zionist Organization of America at their annual convention. In an effort to support Kaplan, who was disappointed by the response to his presentation, Klutznick suggests that Kaplan would need to find other organizational avenues to pursue his understanding of Zionism. Kaplan must have already been keenly aware that his Zionism faced serious headwinds.
A few years earlier, Kaplan published A New Zionism (1955), which outlined his programmatic and ideological vision for Zionism after 1948. Following on his long-standing of vision of Zionism as an engine of global Jewish renaissance, Kaplan believed that the Jewish people should not deputize the State of Israel to speak on behalf of Jews around the world. In order to ensure that Jewish national identity would remain distinct from Israeli citizenship, Kaplan advocated for global Jewish political bodies that could represent Jews from the homeland and the Diaspora. Moreover, Kaplan insisted on distinguishing Jewish nationhood from Israeli statehood.
This understanding of post-statehood Zionism, deeply rooted in pre-1948 American Zionism, clashed with evolving notions of Zionism among the leadership of American Jewish organizations. Following Israeli leadership, organizational leaders viewed the creation of the state itself as the endpoint of Zionism and viewed supporting the state as the primary obligation for American Jews. Kaplan was troubled by this this shift away from the goal of Jewish national revitalization and towards galvanizing political support for the state.
Unfortunately for Kaplan, his efforts—supported by Klutznick—to give new meaning to Zionism failed to impact American Jewish organizational life. Few organizations or leaders adopted Kaplan’s proposal that Zionism’s focus should remain on building on the unique Jewish political tradition of ethical nationhood. Probably realizing Zionism’s limitations, Kaplan tellingly moved away from the term in his last book, The Religion of Ethical Nationhood (1970). Ethical nationhood, rather than Zionism, best represented his argument that Jewish nationalism differentiate between the Jewish nation and the Israeli state.
This correspondence between Klutznick and Kaplan thus reflects an inflection point in the evolution of American Jewish attitudes towards Zionism and Israel. In the late 1950s, Klutznick and Kaplan still believed that Zionism could be rescued from its increasing association primarily with the state. By the 1970s, Zionism—and the American institutions supporting Israel—increasingly considered the separation of Jewish nation and state as a marginal and even dangerous viewpoint.
Yet this exchange between Klutznick and Kaplan provide important evidence that American Zionism included a far more capacious set of views about American Jewish-Israel relations than exist in the contemporary landscape. With American Jews increasingly divided over the issue of Israel, perhaps this letter reminds us that now could be an important time to “give new meaning in the modern context to ‘Zionism.’ ”
