US–Israeli Relationship

The US–Israeli relationship is complicated, dynamic, multidimensional, and enduring. From initial American governmental opposition to the present, Washington has become Israel’s most trusted ally. Rooted in common bonds, entrenched military sharing, and valued strategic interests, the association has also greatly influenced the shaping and sustenance of American Jewish identity. Four factors have influenced the relationship’s evolution: (1) deep American Jewish involvement in the American electoral system; (2) American government impatience with regularly objectionable Arab state behavior toward Washington; (3) a US imperative to contain threats to the region’s politics and states, including the Cold War, Islamic radicalism, and Iranian adventurism; and (4) how Washington retained its perceived need not to alienate Arab oil-producing states. The evolving relationship is explained in three time periods: distance after World War II, the unwavering embrace of Israel’s security from the1960s onward, and deep disagreements with that sustained embrace seventy years later.

US-Israeli Relationship

The US-Israeli relationship is complicated, dynamic, multidimensional, and enduring. From initial American governmental opposition to the present, Washington has become Israel’s most trusted ally. Rooted in common bonds, entrenched military sharing, and valued strategic interests, the association has also greatly influenced the shaping and sustenance of American Jewish identity. Four factors have influenced the relationship’s evolution: (1) deep American Jewish involvement in the American electoral system; (2) American government impatience with regularly objectionable Arab state behavior toward Washington; (3) a US imperative to contain threats to the region’s politics and states, including the Cold War, Islamic radicalism, and Iranian adventurism; and (4) how Washington retained its perceived need not to alienate Arab oil-producing states. The evolving relationship is explained in three time periods: distance after World War II, the unwavering embrace of Israel’s security from the1960s onward, and deep disagreements with that sustained embrace seventy years later.

Israel for American Eyes: Literature on the Move, and the Mediated Repertoire of American Jewish Identity, 1960–1980

The translation and mediation of literature can play an important role in the ideologically charged transfer of ideas between cultures. This paper approaches the English translation of Hebrew literature as a subtle form of cultural appropriation, whereby agents such as literary critics, scholars, editors, and translators mediated Israeli notions and narratives into Jewish American literary discourse. The article discusses forms of mediation of Hebrew literature in the 1960s and 1970s that promoted a more progressive, yet less secular, notion of Judaism than that depicted in the source works, and subdued an antidiasporic view of Jewish identity. It shows how high moral standards were represented as an inherent feature of Judaism, and Israeli society was portrayed in a more positive moral light than in the sometimes self-critical source texts. American Jewish readership was thus introduced to a notion of Judaism that the agents assumed would be “easier to stomach” than that of the source literary works, and could serve to reinforce some of the tenets of contemporary American Jewish identity.

The Bible and Judaism in America

The Jewish Holy Scriptures have long served as a defining symbol of American Jewish communal life and culture. A copy of the Torah first arrived in what is now New York City in 1655, and ever after the presence of the Jewish scriptures has helped identify and coalesce Jewish communities throughout the colonies and then the United States. American Jewish communities have continued to privilege the first five books of the Bible, but there are twenty-four books in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible (and its several American translations) continues to be a mainstay in American Jewish identity, helping give shape and define the character of Jewish adherents and their communities throughout the United States.