Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856–1941) was an American lawyer, Supreme Court Justice, and a prominent Zionist leader of the early 20th century.
Excerpt from: The Jewish Problem and How to Solve It (1915)
Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with Patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent. A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state, and of his city; for being loyal to his family, and to his profession or trade; for being loyal to his college or his lodge. Every Irish American who contributed toward advancing home rule was a better man and a better American for the sacrifice he made. Every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels that neither he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so....
There is no inconsistency between loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry. The Jewish spirit, the product of our religion and experiences, is essentially modern and essentially American. Not since the destruction of the Temple have the Jews in spirit and in ideals been so fully in harmony with the noblest aspirations of the country in which they lived...
Indeed, loyalty to America demands rather that each American Jew become a Zionist. For only through the ennobling effect of its strivings can we develop the best that is in us and give to this country the full benefit of our great inheritance. The Jewish spirit, so long preserved, the character developed by so many centuries of sacrifice, should be preserved and developed further, so that in America as elsewhere the sons of the race may in the future live lives and do deeds worthy of their ancestors...
The Columbus Platform of Reform Judaism (1937)
Israel. Judaism is the soul of which Israel is the body. Living in all parts of the world, Israel has been held together by the ties of a common history, and above all, by the heritage of faith. Though we recognize in the group loyalty of Jews who have become estranged from our religious tradition, a bond which still unites them with us, we maintain that it is by its religion and for its religion that the Jewish people has lived. The non-Jew who accepts our faith is welcomed as a full member of the Jewish community. In all lands where our people live, they assume and seek to share loyally the full duties and responsibilities of citizenship and to create seats of Jewish knowledge and religion. In the rehabilitation of Palestine, the land hallowed by memories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life. Throughout the ages it has been Israel's mission to witness to the Divine in the face of every form of paganism and materialism. We regard it as our historic task to cooperate with all men in the establishment of the kingdom of God, of universal brotherhood, Justice, truth and peace on earth. This is our Messianic goal.
Simon Rawidowicz (1897-1957) was a Polish-born American Jewish philosopher, ideologue, and critic of Zionist idealology that negated the diaspora.
Excerpt from: Two That Are One (1949)
"Two that are one"... must not be understood as a one-sided obligation; each must mutually recognize the other. The Diaspora of Israel must build the State of Israel with all its strength, even more than it has in the past seventy years, and the state must recognize the Diaspora as of equal value, and an equally responsible co-builder and co-creator of all Jewish life....
The Land of Israel in and of itself has an exceptional, unique place in the Jewish soul, in Jewish history, and in Jewish reality, that no other piece of earth has yet had or will ever have, so far as we can foresee. But I am calling for the recognition of full moral and practical equal right and value between Jews in the Land of Israel and Jews outside of it....
Every Jewish community, large or small, must, so long as it exists, be recognized as an equal partner in the people of Israel, which is the sum of all Jewish communities.
I reject also the entire notion and terminology of "giving" and "taking" between the State of Israel and the Diaspora. There are not, nor should be, absolute givers and takers among Jews. I do not want to try to calculate who gives more, and who will give more in the future; that is not important. What is important is the independent spontaneous creativity of each center of Jewish life, "each man in his own camp," each community where it lives, be it heaven or hell.
Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983) was a Lithuanian-born American rabbi, professor, theologian, philosopher, and the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism.
Excerpt from: A New Zionism (1954, 1959)
No American Jew will subscribe to any cause that may cast serious doubt on the wholeheartedness of his Americanism....
Zionism is contemporary Judaism in action. Judaism in action means that the Jewish people is actively engaged in an effort to adjust itself creatively to the contemporary world...
All this leads to one inescapable conclusion: Zionism should henceforth treat the establishment of the State of Israel only as the first indispensable step in the salvaging of the Jewish people and the regeneration of its spirit. Actually to attain these objectives, Zionism has to be viewed not merely as a cultural and political movement, but also as a religious movement for our day...
To live a more abundant Jewish life, whether in Israel or outside, Jews will have to foster a form of religion which will be relevant both to the past career of the Jewish People and to the spiritual needs and world outlook of the modern man. It will have to be a religion free from both creedal and clerical authoritarianism, and able to meet the moral and spiritual needs of our day. Such a religion will necessarily have to allow for diversity of belief and practice...
It must not have political ties with government, either in Israel or in the Diaspora. A movement like Zionism should not bring it about that Jews who have won the right to live should lose the right to live according to the dictates of their conscience....
Diaspora Jewries are in a state of moral and spiritual crisis, and their drift to assimilation is being daily accelerated. That fact is quite patent, except to those who deliberately shut their eyes to what is taking place about them....
The New Zionism. should relate the Jewish people, the Jewish reli-gion, and the Jewish way of life to Eretz Yisrael as the alpha and omega of Jewish existence. Eretz Yisrael has to be reclaimed as the only place in the world where Jewish civilization can be perfectly at home. But also other lands where Jews have taken root have to be rendered capable of harboring that civilization. The one purpose cannot be achieved without the other. Should Jewish civilization fail to be at home in Eretz Yisrael, it will disappear everywhere else...
As Zionists, we have to reconstitute our peoplehood, reclaim our ancient homeland and revitalize our Jewish way of life. Each of these three objectives should be pursued with the end in view, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, of developing such interpersonal and intergroup relations as are likely to help us become more fully human. That is to be our religion and our mission.
Herman Wouk (1915-2019) was an American, Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose works often explored themes of Jewish identity and Zionism. A veteran of the U.S. Navy during World War II, Wouk's experiences in the military and his Jewish heritage significantly influenced his writing, particularly in his epic war novels set during the Holocaust and World War II.
Excerpt from: This Is My God (1969, 1974)
In the categories of Hebrew law, modern Zionism is a single long action of lifesaving, of snatching great masses of people out of the path of sure extinction....
The special feeling that comes to one who has been a member cha minority all his life, and now finds himself in a place where ever youdyis like him this extraordinary shift which changes the very nerve signals, as it were must be a sensation that only a Diaspora Jew who comes to Israel can know. Born Israelis cannot imagine it....
A taxi driver courteously and ably explained to me where I had gone wrong in writing The Caine Mutiny, in terms not much different from the first American reviews, I was his cousin, you see; he could speak freely....
There will be no death camps in the United States that we live in. History is a phantasmagoria, and anything can happen. But the civilination we know will have to be obliterated before a Hitler can sit in Washing-ton. The threat of Jewish oblivion in America is different. It is the threat of pleasantly vanishing down a broad highway at the wheel of a hig powered station wagon, with the golf clubs piled in the back... "Mr.
Abramson left his home in the morning after a hearty breakfast, apparently in the best of health, and was not seen again. His last words were that he world get in a round before going to the office,..." Of course Mr. Abramson will not die. When his amnesia clears, he will be Mr. Adamson, and his wife and children will join him, and all will be well. But the Jewish question will be over in the United States....
Seventy years ago, Herzl's great opponent, Ahad Ha'am, foresaw the new Jewish state as the spiritual center of a regenerated Diaspora. For this moderate claim he was attacked and scorned by the all-out Zionists.
Now he appears to have been a prophet. The return of all Jewry to the Holy Land remains a messianic vision, but Israel already exists as our new spiritual center....
We Jews have had our age of ash, and we have survived, barely, but we have survived. With struggles and dangers that still mount, we have found our way to Jerusalem the Golden, and we are rebuilding it. From this wonder of history, all men can take hope.