64 Friday, January 6, 1984 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS U.S. Interests in Israel Have Christian Roots A friendship that is gain- ing new status, the U.S.- Israel accord, has Christian roots of long duration. Much of it has a religious fervor and stems from the devo- tions acquired from the Bible and the Prophets. The social aspects have their as- pects in the support for Zionism and its aspirations provided by the U.S. Con- gress and the Presidents. Peter Grose traces many of the roots in "Israel in the Mind of America" (Knopf). If it were only for the re- collections about the Blackstone Memorial, the Grose volume would merit much acclaim as a chapter in Zionist and Israel re- cords. It is supplemented by much more, which accords his researched history of American interests in a re- constructed Jewish home- land. Eugene William Blackstone, a Methodist Bible student, who never attained a theological degree but was referred to as a Reverend, who was born in 1841, wrote the famous document which he presented to President Benjamin Har- rison on March 5, 1891. It was so stimulating and inspired that 413 eminent Americans, including members of Congress, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Cyrus McCor- mick, Supreme Court jus- tices, editors and people in many fields of endeavor endorsed it. As in the present era when concern is shown in the fate of Russian Jewry, the Blackstone document proclaimed: If they could have au- tonomy in government, the Jews of the world would rally to transport and estab- lish their suffering brethren in their time-honored habi- tation. For over 17 centuries they have patiently waited for such a privileged oppor- tunity . . . Let us now re- store to them the land of which they were so cruelly despoiled by our Roman an- cestors." _ Grose points out in this reconstructed story of advo- cacy of Restoration that Blackstone sent a copy of the Old Testament to Theodor Herzl, emphasiz- ing the Prophetic while dif- fering views which would endorse a Jewish state elsewhere than in the Holy Land. He marked the pas- sages in which the- Prophets designate Palestine as the chosen land for the Chosen People. Grose states that the marked Bible is on dis- play at Herzl's Tomb in Jerusalem and a forest planted in Israel. in Blackstone's memory. While there were no specific results from the memorandum issued by Blackstone, and President Harrison had done nothing about it, this root in Zionist his- tory has other aspects re- ferred to in the Grose ac- count in that Jews ap- parently were frightened by it and there was an evidence of early Jewish anti-Zionism which mainly disappeared in the Hitler era and with the redemption of the Holy Land into the Israel statehood. All the interesting as- pects in the approaches to present-day American interests arc outlined by Grose. They were not all positive. There were the negatives and the political involvethents, including vote-seeking. Grose goes into many de- tails regarding Jewish di- visiveness as well as devo- tions and he comments for example, in reference to Re- form Jewish opposition to Zionism, the objections to the movement by the foun- der of the Reform movement in this country: "Ironically it was the younger genera- tion of I.M. Wise's own Re- form movement that pro- duced the American leaders of the Jewish national cause." Louis D. Brandeis' dynamic leadership and in- spiration are recorded in this historical analysis and so are many of the other American Jewish leaders including Stephen S. Wise and the enthusiasm that was engendered by the Bal- four Declaration. Inevitably, Chaim Weizmann is in eminence here and so are the issues revolving around the Arab-Jewish conflict. Franklin D. Roosevelt is accounted for and deplora- bly he is portrayed as not having interceded in Brec- kenridge Long's treatment of Nazi victims which is considered violently anti- Semitic in the history of the Holocaust. FDR and Ibn Saud and the pursuant anti-Zionist development are not ig- nored. Grose gives an extensive account of the David Niles association with Roosevelt and President Truman and Niles is quoted as having said: "For years to come, American Zionists would eagerly accept all reassur- ances of Roosevelt's fidelity. As late as 1944, a powerful White House functionary named David Niles told Zionist petitioners that Roosevelt was 'completely with you.' Palestine's future would be settled in a 'highly satisfactory' way, the sym- pathetic Niles told his vis- itors. JNF Stamps Honor Blue Boxes ,15 n 3- *1 woo t AND YOU SHALL BRING REDE MP T ON UNTO THE LAND Levtticus 25,24 "Yet not five years la- for by Grose: ter, the same David Niles "At dinner on the last confessed to 'serious night at Yalta, Roosevelt doubts in my mind that asked Stalin directly if he Israel would have come favored Zionism. Stalin to being if Roosevelt had `answered warily: yes, in lived.' principle, but he recognized "Bernard Baruch, no the difficulty of solving the Zionist but concerned with Jewish problem,' according the Jewish destiny nonethe- to the American interpre- less, surveyed the choice in ter, Charles E. Bohlen. 1944 between Roosevelt and "Then, roguishly an- his Republican presidential ticipating Churchill's an- challenger, Thomas E. De- noyance at being caught wey, and said bluntly, 'I unawares — and worse, in would rather trust my the presence of Stalin — American Jewishness in Roosevelt, casually an- Mr. Dewey's hands than in nounced that he was stop- Mr. Roosevelt's.' ping on his way home the "Secretary of State Cor- next day for a meeting with dell Hull wrote that the King of Saudi Arabia... Roosevelt 'at times talked " The President re- both ways to Zionists and plied with a smile that Arabs, besieged as he was there was only one con- by each camp.' cession that he thought "Something odd hap- he might offer,' Bohlen pened between the living noted, 'and that was to Roosevelt, trusted and re- give Ibn Saud the six mil- vered by America's Jews, lion Jews in the United and the portrait of political States.' Even bad jokes hypocrisy that came out fell flat with Stalin." There is this summation after his death. What is the fair judgment to be made by Grose of the result of the about Roosevelt and the FDR-Ibn Saud meeting at Jews? The role of the 32nd Yalta: "Roosevelt 'wished to as- President of the United States in the long drama of sure His Majesty that he the Jewish restoration would do nothing to assist poses a challenge to the his- the Jews against the Arabs torian. The reality is and would make no move stranger and more complex hostile to the Arab people.' than either critics or defen- Soothing words, capable of varying interpretations, ders suppose." It is of interest, there- but to Ibn Saud they were fore, to note in the Grose enough to justify the whole story that Churchill and adventure beyond his fron- Stalin were annoyed with tiers." Abba Hillel Silver, the Roosevelt's proposals to be made to Ibn Saud. Biltmore Conference which There was a "bad joke" emphasized the demand for by FDR, thus accounted statehood, David Ben- Gurion, the Holocaust and its effects, partition, Tru- man and the emergency of Israel, and the subsequent events are adequately re- corded. The summary to this extensive story takes into account the many nega- tives, the divisiveness, frustrations, the saga of many discords. Yet Grose concludes on an optimis- tic note: "No American adminis- tration ever seriously entertained the possibility of reversing the decisions of 1947 and 1948, which estab- lished the Jewish state in law and sovereignty. Calls by Palestine Arabs in the 1970s for a binational state of all Palestine — the for mula rejected in 1947 — continue to fall on deaf ears in Washington and across the United States. "For, liking it or not, Americans who are willing to look see something for themselves in Israel. Even as,they go their own way, in pursuit of their own . na- tional interests, -Americans and Israelis are bonded to- gether like no two national sovereign peoples. "As the Judaic heritage flowed through the minds of America's early settlers and helped to shape the new American republic, so Israel restored adopted the vision and the values of the American dream. Each, the United States and Israel, grafted the heritage of the other onto itself." --P•S, New Volume on Apocrypha in Israel's past. This pseudepigraphal litera- Although many Jews ture has now been know that the Bible shaped gathered under one not only Judaism but much cover and analyzed by a of the Western culture, they distinguished group of are generally not familiar scholars who not only with the fact that a vast provide accurate transla- body of Jewish literature tions, but critical com- was composed -roughly be- mentaries as well. tween the years 200 BCE In "The Old Testament and 200 CE — the crucial Pseudepigrapha, Apocalyp- years marking the begin- tic Literature and Testa- nings of rabbinic Judasim ments" (Doubleday), edited and early Christianity. by James H. Charlesworth, These books, known as the authors include 27 apocryphal and pseudepig- books, some thought lost raphal writings, never and only recently found in achieved canonicity; that is, libraries, others never men-. they were. not included in tioned in ancient literature. the final redaction of the These writings em- Hebrew Bible. phasize such ideas as per- The Apocrypha, consist- sonal resurrection and sal- ing of 14 books, was in- vation, and the coming of cluded in the Vulgate — the the MesSiah — ideas official Catholic Bible—but hardly mentioned in the Bi- was considered uncanonical ble. Included in this first by the Protestants. volume of a projected two- Ecclesiasticus, or the Wis- volume work on the dom of Jesus, son of Sirach, Pseudepigrapha are 19 is the only apocryphal book apocalypses — books of dis- quoted in the Talmud. The closure or revelation. (The apocryphal • books of Mac- only apocalyptic work cabees and Judith were re- familiar to most Jews today claimed by Jews during the is the Aramaic Book of Middle Ages and were Daniel in the Bible.) linked with the Hanuka This first volume also in- holiday. cludes eight testaments at- While Apocrypha tributed to "Old Testament" means "hidden writ- figures, such as Moses, Sol- ings," Pseudepigrapha omon and Job. These testa- connotes writings falsely ments are reputed last attributed to ideal figures words and wills of model By DR. JOSEPH GUTMANN . 2 iR • • • 4 a r, t The Jewish National Fund has issued two new stamps in its philatelic series to mark the 82nd anniversary of the founding of Keren Kayemet LeIsrael. The stamp on the right shows the JNF blue box and the stamp on the left shows trees and flowers growing from it. Since 1902, JNF has issued 4,200 stamps which are valued by collectors because of their topical subjects and depictions of famous per- sonalities in Jewish history. JOSEPH GUTMANN figures, which were de- signed to instruct their heirs in the paths of right- eousness. In light, of such as- tounding recent dis- coveries as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the excava- tions of early synagogues in the Syro-Palestinian area, scholars are being forced to abandon the widely accepted idea of a "normative Judaism," or a Judaism ruled by an all-powerful orthodoxy centered in Israel. This important volume is strongly recommended to all students interested in literature, Judaism and Christianity. PIY