Emily Alice Katz. Bringing Zion Home

In the first two decades of Israel’s existence, only one-third of American Jews visited Israel. Short of visiting themselves, how then could American Jews bring Zion home? Emily Alice Katz argues that the convergence of cultural consumption and the increasing need for American Jews to celebrate Jewish distinctiveness, allowed American Jews to support Israel through the promotion of Israeli culture and material goods at home in the U.S. This convergence ultimately remade “American Jewish culture in the immediate postwar decades” (2). American Jews brought Zion home through buying books about Israel, learning Israeli folk dances, promoting Israeli material imports into department stores and synagogue gift stores, and by supporting Israeli music and art. Such cultural, economic, and material support for Israel allowed American Jews to celebrate their distinctive Jewishness with pride, support the fledging Jewish state, and simultaneously support American goals and interests. In the context of the Cold War, American Jewish support for Israel could be construed by boosters of the alliance as supporting a new ally that served as “a cultural analogue to America” (139). Simultaneously, Katz concludes that, “for many American Jews, engaging with Israel in the cultural realm was a crucial channel through which they came to know, or to feel that they knew, Israel” (138).

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