4 Ethnicity and State Policy: The State of Israel in the Intellectual and Political Discourse of the US Jewish Press
This chapter examines the relationship between Jewish ethnic awareness and political attitude towards the State of Israel, as expressed in three leading periodicals in the United States: Tikkun , Commentary , and The Forward , during the past twenty years. The discussion that took place within three periodicals during the past generation has been primarily political in nature, free of ideational questions of principle that had preoccupied statesmen and intellectuals during two preceding generations. These sought to formulate a collective definition of Klal Yisrael in the aftermath of Holocaust and founding of State of Israel, as a consequence of which the center of gravity of Jewish life had shifted from Europe to the United States and Israel. The first issue raised during these discussions was the question of a collective definition of world Jewry. The second matter of principle under discussion related to the definition of Jewish existence outside the State of Israel. Keywords: Commentary ; Jewish ethnic awareness; Klal Yisrael ; political attitude; state of Israel; The Forward ; Tikkun ; US Jewish press; world Jewry