Convincing Truman to Recognize the State of Israel
Convincing Truman to Recognize the State of Israel
July 24, 2014
Israel Studies, Culture & Jewish Thought
St. Louis Jewish Light — President Harry S. Truman risked quite a bit when he decided that the United States should become the first country to recognize Israel as a nation, but why?
BGU Prof. Ofer Shiff, a senior lecturer at BGU’s Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, points to Reform Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver.
Rabbi Silver was a leading Jewish advocate for founding the State of Israel and winning essential U.S. recognition immediately after Ben-Gurion’s declaration of independence as the British mandate ended and Israel’s first war with five Arab countries began.
President Harry S. Truman accepts a menorah in 1951 from Abba Eban, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. and U.N., and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
In his latest book, The Downfall of Abba Hillel Silver and the Foundation of Israel, Prof. Shiff takes a look at the impact Rabbi Silver had on President Truman and on the establishment of the State of Israel.
While other prominent Zionists and rabbis at the time were more charming in trying to gain the president’s support for Israel, Silver was direct, honest and outright rude.
Nevertheless, Rabbi Silver was very useful and effective in building support for the Zionist cause in the United States during and immediately after World War II. And, despite his pounding on President Truman’s desk and ticking off the chief executive, Rabbi Silver made his point with the right person at the right time.
“The 1940s struggle for the establishment of a Jewish State was indeed important, even critical in Silver’s eyes,” says Prof. Shiff.
“But, it was merely as a first stage in a larger objective – as a vehicle to remove an insular and insecure Jewish mentality rife with distrust that had developed over centuries of persecution in exile.”
Prof. Shiff also theorizes that Rabbi Silver would be pained if he saw Israel as it is today, “Most likely, Rabbi Silver would be distraught at the country’s increasingly isolated status in the world and the impression among many of its critics that it has no rightful place on this earth.”
Read more on the St. Louis Jewish Light website >>
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