“Valiant Builders, Fighters, and Dreamers”: Abba Hillel Silver on American Jewish Relations with Israel, 1957

The focus of this paper is a speech delivered by the American Zionist leader, Abba Hillel Silver, seven months after the Suez crisis (October-November 1956) and approximately one month after Israeli diplomatic efforts failed to counteract Israel’s forced withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula without prior guarantees from the United States or the United Nations. Silver’s speech featured a bitter reaction to what he regarded as unfair American and international pressure. However, together with grave disappointment with the President Dwight D. Eisenhower administration and a staunch support for Israel’s diplomatic struggles, Silver’s speech reveals subtle criticism of Israel’s pessimistic outlook regarding Jewish-non-Jewish relations. A careful reading of the speech reveals that its main purpose was to refute any pessimistic conclusions that might be drawn regarding what seemed to be a recurrent Jewish impotence in the face of the American government’s willingness to sacrifice yet again – as it did during World War II – Israel and Jewish refugees. It prefigures the mix of support and criticism that would not only persist but come to characterize the core problematic of American Jewish-Israeli Jewish relations in the decades ahead.