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Ben Gurion Against the Diaspora:
Three Comments
- Abstract
In an address before the World Zionist Congress, which met last December in Jerusalem, David Ben Gurion reiterated his belief that Jewish life in the Diaspora has a dim future. COMMENTARY invited three prominent American Jewish intellectuals-each of whom speaks out of a different relationship to Zionist ideology-to explore some of the wider implications of Ben Gurion’s speech and of the great excitement which followed upon its publication in the press. OSCAR HANDLIN is professor of history at Harvard and Director of the Center for the Study of the History of Liberty in America; among his many books is The Uprooted which won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1952. MILTON HIMMELFARB is one of our contributing editors, as well as an editor of the American Jewish Year Book; he also conducts the department “In the Community” which appears regularly in these pages at four-month intervals. CHARLES E. SHULMAN, rabbi of the Riverdale Temple in New York, is a well-known Zionist and the author of several books, the most recent being What It Means to Be a Jew.
Oscar Handlin: At first sight, the worldwide repercussions of David Ben Gurion’s statement chiding the Jews of the Diaspora for their failure to come to Israel, seemed altogether out of proportion either to its novelty or to its implication. Surely it is no news by now that the Prime Minister holds the views he then expressed.
He has never made any secret of his feelings on this matter. Ben Gurion has always been, and remains, convinced that it is the duty of Zionists to migrate to the Promised Land. He doubts that a whole Jewish life can be led outside the borders of the State of Israel. He anticipates, therefore, that the remnant of Jewry who do not take refuge there will disappear in the near future. A gradual process of assimilation will deprive those in the free countries of their identity; and those in the unfree areas of the world simply face extermination. Whatever position others may take, it is therefore the pre-eminent obligation of Zionists to save themselves by aliyah.
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