Even in comparison with the rest of the history of the Diaspora, the relationship of Zionism and Israel to American Jews has long been notable for its ironies and contradictions. In the prestate era, even though Zionism was largely irrelevant to American Jews, their extraordinary efforts at fundraising and political support made possible the very birth of the Jewish state. Since 1967, once Israel was established, there has been no other country whose citizens have been as committed to the success of another country as American Jews have been to Israel. Nevertheless, the vast majority of American Jews have remained astonishingly ignorant of the object of their devotion. In spite of all of their support for and obsession with Israel, the Jewish state has had relatively little effect on the religious and cultural life of American Jews. The key to these apparent contradictions lies in the fact that, from the beginning to the present, American Jews’ response to Zionism and Israel has been circumscribed by American priorities and needs. From their early indifference to Zionism, through a quarter century of unequivocal support for Israel following its foundation, to the breakdown of consensus in the 1970s and 1980s leading to the present fragmentation, American Jews have related to Israel primarily through their American identity.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, European Zionists and American Jews were diametrically opposed in spirit, ideology, worldviews, and lifestyle. Classical Zionism saw anti-Semitism as all pervasive, ineradicable, and impervious to the liberalism in which American Jews had placed their trust. Believing that diasporic life was inevitably doomed, Zionists maintained that the only solution was for all Jews to emmigrate to Palestine and form a state of their own where they could fully and safely live out authentic, Jewish lives.