CHAPTER 1 Zionism and Its Reform Jewish Critics in America Before World War II
(pp. 1-36)
There is a story, probably an apocryphal one, that a few days before the first Zionist congress in 1897, the historian Joseph Klausner asked an American rabbi whether there were any Zionists in the United States. “Yes,” replied the rabbi, “there are two. A mad man named Stephen Wise and a mad woman, Henrietta Szold.”¹ Although an exaggeration, the story reflects the weakness of early American Zionism. Yet from initial insignificance in the 1890s, the American Zionist movement rose to a position of paramount importance in the 1940s, when, in partnership with Palestinian Zionists, it played a decisive role in...
