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PDF FormatRegarding the third argument, to the effect that I ignore the religious content of the Hebrew canon: I will be eternally grateful to Landau if she can produce any two Jews who agree with one another regarding this “religious content.” Christianity and Islam have a religious dogma; Judaism does not. Judaism is the boundless enterprise of midrash. Each generation has its commentators, and in each generation the commentators are divided by a joy of creative dispute that is unparalleled in any other national culture. The ideal, established at the time of the Sages, of “increasing disagreements in Israel” is the diametric opposite of dogmatism. The only agreement that Jews enjoy concerning the essence of their “religion” is with respect to the textual canon which is the object of the midrash. “Tora study” does not mean teaching fundamental principles of faith, but rather the endless interpretation of the canon, in accordance with the dictum: “Turn it, and turn it, for everything is in it.” (Avot 5:25) The Judaism of the Lubavitcher Rebbe is not that of Yeshayahu Leibowitz. The Judaism of Rabbi Shach is not that of Rabbi Kaduri. The Lithuanian yeshiva world, the Hasidim, the Conservatives, the Reform, the religious Zionists from the school of Rabbi Kook or Rabbi Reines, the amulet-hawking “Kabbalists,” those for whom Judaism is a sort of folk culture, and the secularists whose Jewishness is a biological-genetic matter—they all are kosher Jews who share no single article of faith. What they share, rather, is textual. Our nation is established by a common text, and our history as a nation is the history of the literature we wrote in the wake of that text. The faith of Maimonides was radically different from that of Judah Halevi, but each drew his faith from the same literary source. “These and those are the words of the living God,” goes the rabbinic dictum, and Maimonides is not to be dismissed in favor of Judah Halevi, nor Judah Halevi in favor of Maimonides. Our national-cultural identity cannot be formulated as a “claim” about the world, God or man, but rather as a continual relationship with the textual sources, regardless of how these sources are interpreted. In a sense, “observance” of the Tora is occupation with it. And this means studying the canon of Hebrew literature, interpreting it, and writing Hebrew literature that follows its path.
The USS Liberty
TO THE EDITORS:
The actions of men and women from times past inevitably leave many unresolved questions for those who later try to understand them, and nowhere is this more the case than with regard to the study of wars, which are frequently shrouded by the smoke of battle. Michael B. Oren’s excellent essay, “The ‘USS Liberty’: Case Closed” (AZURE 9, Spring 2000), should be widely read, and not only by military historians, political leaders and scholars researching the critical subject of Israeli-American relations.
In the thick of the Six Day War, on June 8, 1967, Israeli warships and torpedo boats opened fire on the American surveillance ship USS Liberty, which was sailing not far to the north of the Sinai coast at El-Arish. The Liberty was severely damaged, with 34 dead and 171 injured.
The tragic incident sparked a prolonged controversy in the United States, with many publications, official and unofficial, charging the Israeli government and its armed forces with having mounted a malicious and deliberate attack on the ship.
Michael Oren has undoubtedly succeeded, through his meticulous and evenhanded archival research, in solving the riddle of the attack on a ship of Israel’s most important ally, by showing persuasively that the Libertytragedy resulted, as happens in every war, from a string of blunders, mis-identifications and human errors, on both the American and Israeli sides.
I understand that Oren’s essay is part of a comprehensive study on the Six Day War. It is to be hoped that this study will also address the question of whether the Liberty incident had long-range repercussions on Israeli-American relations. The persistent anger of former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, American naval officers and anti-Israeli journalists attests to the complexity and sensitivity of the relations of a small country dependent upon the support of a superpower. Given the ongoing concern over Israel’s arms sales to other countries, and especially in light of the recent flap over the sale of Phalcon systems to China, it is especially instructive to cite a letter written by Winston Churchill to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941 (the letter was never sent): “No nation has the right to cause another nation to be so dependent upon it, as the United States wants to cause Britain.” It seems to me that Churchill’s statement is valid with regard to Israeli-American relations as well.
Tzvi Ganin
Kefar Sava
TO THE EDITORS:
There are one or two technical errors in Michael B. Oren’s article that are of little significance in themselves, but which will give some ammunition to the article’s critics, and make even friendly readers a little dubious about Oren’s familiarity with military matters.
It is certain, for example, that the U.S. aircraft dispatched from an aircraft carrier to aid the Liberty were not, as Oren says, “F-104s”—he may mean F-14s—and it is highly unlikely that the aircraft, whatever they were, were “armed with nuclear weapons” for one thing, the use of such weapons needs to be authorized by the National Command Authority, not by any local commander; for another, how would such weapons be used in defense of the Liberty?
It is a shame that an article designed to correct others’ errors, and set a confused record straight, should itself be marred by technical errors.
Mark Halpern
New York, New York
MICHAEL OREN RESPONDS:
I wish to thank Mark Halpern for calling my attention to the error regarding the make of the American aircraft dispatched to aid the Liberty. Several readers noted the mistake, among them J.R. Dunn, Associate Editor of The International Military Encyclopedia. Indeed, the fighters were not F-104s, or F-14s, but F-4 Phantoms, A-4 Skyhawks and A-1 Skyraiders.
Along with Halpern, readers also raised questions about the nuclear ordnance these planes were carrying. According to A. Jay Cristol, a leading authority on the Liberty incident who interviewed senior officers aboard the carrier Saratoga, from which the planes took off, the carriers were involved in nuclear exercises at the time of the attack and had to respond with the ordnance they had on deck. The fear that the bombs, if used against Soviet targets, would trigger World War III led to the planes’ sudden recall. Indeed, Cristol’s dissertation notes: “Some of the aircraft were armed with ordnance that could not be safely brought back aboard the ship and those aircraft were diverted to Soudha Bay, Crete.”
American Zionism
TO THE EDITORS:
Your editorial “Making History” (AZURE 9, Spring 2000) did a splendid job of analyzing the motives and impact of Israel’s “new historians.” Unfortunately, Gil Troy, author of one of the book reviews in the same issue (“After Virtue”), seems unaware of the damage being done by American Jewry’s own “new historians.”
Troy referred to Mark Raider, author of the recent book The Emergence of American Zionism, as “a promising young historian.” Those of us who have been involved in Zionist movement politics during the past decade know that Raider is a young Labor-Zionist activist; among other things, he was a candidate in the last two World Zionist Congress elections on the Labor-Zionist slate.
In other words, Raider is not an impartial historian; he has a politically partisan agenda. On the political battlefield of the World Zionist Congress, Raider seeks to advance Labor’s agenda. Troy notes that while Raider’s book is called The Emergence of American Zionism, it“really only analyzes the emergence of the Labor-Zionist paradigm and the Labor-Zionist establishment in America.” But Troy makes this remark in passing, and then proceeds to treat the book as if it is a serious history of American Zionism. Raider’s book is actually an attempt to rewrite American Zionist history to make it appear as if the Labor-Zionists were a major force in the movement—when actually they were one of the smallest and least significant of the Zionist organizations in the United States during those years and ever since.
In Israel, “new historians” are twisting historical facts to promote a political agenda; here in the United States, we can see the emergence of a similar phenomenon.
Gideon Evans
Cherry Hill, New Jersey
GIL TROY RESPONDS:
Mr. Evans seems disappointed that I chose to evaluate Raider’s work, rather than attacking Raider personally or politically. Historians, like other citizens, are free to get involved in politics. The best way to keep us all honest is not to engage in ad hominem attacks based on an author’s political bent, but to evaluate the author’s work objectively and dispassionately, which is what I tried to do, noting both strengths and weaknesses in the work.
Evans also seems disappointed that the realities of American Zionism do not quite correspond to his ideology. Emphasizing the centrality of Labor Zionism in America—or in Israel—does not strike me as “new” history or “old” history, but simply history. The fact is, for better or for worse, the Labor Party dominated Israeli politics for the first three decades of the state’s existence, and still remains a major force. Similarly, as I noted in my review, despite the fact that “the great majority of American Zionists belonged to organizations which were not formally Labor-Zionist, such as Hadassah and the Zionist Organization of America…the ideal of a Labor-Zionist Palestine” dominated “American Jewish conceptions of the Jewish state” for decades. We can bemoan this fact, or we can celebrate it. Nevertheless, however misleading the title may be, The Emergence of American Zionism helps us understand this fascinating anomaly, and Raider deserves credit for a thought-provoking and well-organized discussion.
