Eisenhower
And
Israel...
...and reincarnated survivors?
Read all about it in "Read All
About It," a new bimonthly
column citing books of interest.
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSISTANT EDITOR
Dwight David Eisenhower
E
•
verybody should
like Ike.
The supreme
commander of the
Allied European
theater during
World War II, Gen.
Dwight Eisen-
hower had enough
on his hands com-
manding hundreds of thou-
sands of forces fighting the
Nazis. But that didn't stop
him from pressuring the
French to annul the anti-
Jewish laws of the Vichy
regime. And, after the Nazi
surrender, one of Gen.
Eisenhower's first moves
was to nullify the Germans'
anti-Semitic laws.
Now a new book exam-
ines in detail the relations
between Gen. Eisenhower
— who served as 34th presi-
dent of the United States —
and the State of Israel.
Eisenhower and Israel:
U.S.-Israeli Relations, 1953-
1960, by Isaac Alteras and
published by the University
Press of Florida, offers the
first detailed analysis of
early U.S.-Israeli relations.
It is drawn on recently
declassified documents from
both countries, notably
Prime Minister David Ben-
Gurion's diaries and corre-
spondence.
Topics examined include
U.S. interests in the Arab
nations, the impact of
American Jewry on
Eisenhower's and John
Foster Dulles' policies on
Israel, which promised what
to whom in the interchanges
preceding the 1956 invasion
of Suez, and the exact rela-
tionship between Israel,
France and Britain.
Isaac Alteras is associate
professor of history at
Queens College, the City
University of New York.
Beyond the Ashes, pub-
lished by A.R.E. of Virginia
Beach, Va., and written by
Rabbi Yonassan Gershom,
contains accounts of individ-
uals — most of them gen-
tiles — who believe they
died in the Holocaust and
have been reincarnated.
A native of Berkeley,
Calif., Rabbi Gershom
teaches at the Institute of
Adult Jewish Studies in
Minneapolis, Minn. His
research into reincarnation
began when a Norwegian
woman approached him
after a lecture he delivered
chapters about the afterlife
on Kabbalah.
and kabbalistic levels of the
"Ever since childhood," he
soul.
writes, "the very mention of
The Hebrew Bible, the Old
the Holocaust filled her
Testament and Historical
with unexplainable dread.
Criticism: Jews and Christ-
Now her sister was doing a
ians in Biblical Studies by
research paper on the con-
Jon Levenson and published
centration camps and insist-
by Westminster/John Knox
ed on sharing the material,
of Louisville, Ky., offers a
but she simply could not
new perspective on theoreti-
bear to discuss it."
cal criticism.
After he published an
Professor of Jewish stud-
article on the subject of
ies with the divinity school
Holocaust reincarnation,
and a member of the depart-
Rabbi Gershom began
ment of Near Eastern lan-
receiving letters and phone
guages and civilizations at
calls from men and women
Harvard University,
who claimed to have myste-
Professor Leven-
experi-
rious
son focuses on
like
ences,
the relationship
detailed night-
between two
mares, that
interpretative
seemed to be
communities:
related to the
scholars, who
Holocaust. In
are committed
one instance,
to the historical
Rabbi Gershom
critical method
says he can
of biblical inter-
actually smell
pretation, and
burning flesh as
the community
a woman re-
responsible for
counts her terror
the canonization
when thinking of
and preserva-
the death camps.
tion of the
In addition to Michael Bar-ZOhar
Torah.
case histories,
Beyond the Ashes contains
EISENHOWER page 90