The dynamic and vigorous history of Jewish radicals — socialists, anarchists, communists, and their leftist descendants — has been erased from the collective narrative that American-Jews teach today. In the wake of the Holocaust, the founding of the state of Israel, and the fight against the Soviets in the Cold War, an unprecedented level of importance was placed upon the idea of communal consensus. It was seen as more important than ever for Jews to coalesce and collectively rally against our enemies — real and perceived. While this idea of a “communal tent” sprang in part from positive impulses, it nevertheless has wrought injurious consequences for modern Jewish life. Today, the American-Jewish diaspora fears, and consequently, avoids reckoning with its radical history; such an interrogation would demand revisiting the basic lens through which we’ve conceptualized the past 120 years.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 07:19:42 +0000