Jillian Rubin

Has this course significantly changed your view of Jewish history, and if so in what way?

Yes, this class has changed my view of Jewish history. The reason for that is that through this class I have learned a great amount of Jewish history that I did not know about before. In class we learned about Jews during the Middle Ages, and that was really the first time I had learned about Jews during that time. From this class I also learned about Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews and their different beliefs. Although I knew some of this before I learned a great amount from class and the readings for class. This class therefore has changed my view on Jewish history because I have learned a lot from this class that I definitely did not know about before. There are many aspects of Jewish life that I did not ever learn about before taking this class that I now have a better understanding of.

Jillian Rubin
What is (or should be) the role of the Holocaust in American Jewish identity?

I think that the Holocaust had a very big impact on American Jews. Many American Jews, including myself had relatives who were in the Holocaust. I have also learned about the Holocaust a little in High School, in Hebrew school and in a Holocaust course I took here at Ithaca College last year, and also in this class. I think that there should be more emphasis placed on the Holocaust in High School Social Studies classes because so many students, including Jewish students do not know that much about what happened during the Holocaust. I therefore think it would be beneficial if High Schools taught students more about the Holocaust.
By having places such as the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., it allows American Jews (and other Americans as well) to go to a place to remember what happened. Although going to this museum is very sad I think it is very important that we have this in America because it allows Jewish Americans to better understand what happened to their relatives if they were in the Holocaust.

Jillian Rubin

What is (or should be) the role of Israel in American Jewish identity? Should all Jews emigrate to Israel, as David- Ben-Gurion (first prime minister of Israel) argued they should?

Israel should have an important role in American Jewish identity. However all Jews should not emigrate to Israel because then there would not be any Jews here in America. It is therefore important for Jews in America to fully support Israel and help support Israel in any way that they can. However, I do not think that it is necessary for everyone here to go immigrate to Israel. However, I do think that every American Jew definitely should at some point in their lives go to Israel. I think it is very important for Jews to see the homeland. It should also be necessary that all Jewish Americans have a background and knowledge of Israel and how it became a country however again it is not necessary for all Jews to emigrate to Israel.

Jillian Rubin
Jews in the Modern World
Professor Lesses
December 2, 2008
Founding of Israel
The foundation of Israel as a state was a very long process that took a long time to complete. Different countries had different perspectives as to what should happen to the Jewish survivors of the war. Britain was anti-Zionist, the prime minister of Britain did believe that it would be best for Jewish people to have their own state. Britain’s White Paper of May 1939 was a policy statement whose purpose was to decrease and ultimately end Jewish immigration to Palestine. However, Ben-Gurion planned that the Jewish Agency should adopt a policy of civil unrest against the British. There was a militant group called the Lech’i that launched an underground campaign against British immigration policy.
The U.S. played an important role in the foundation of Israel as a state. Later in 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered that the refugees had to be returned to their countries of origin (573). This had to be very difficult for the Jewish refugees because they probably had no intention for the most part of going back to their countries of origin. For the most part they wanted a complete exit from Europe.
Ernest Bevin thought that the thousands of Jewish people who had been displaced from the war should not go to Palestine but instead they should go to the United States. Franklin Roosevelt had doubts about a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine; however he outwardly expressed comradeship for the Zionist cause. The Prime Minister believed that there should be an Anglo-American committee to investigate the problem of refugees and then come up with a solution; the committee was made up of six American and six British members. London was rejecting the Anglo-American committee.
In May 1948, it was announced that Israel was now open to all Jews everywhere in the world and would “extend full equality to all its citizens without distinctions of religion, race, or gender” (594). This was a huge event because it took such a long time for Israel to become a state. The Arab states did not have a favorable reaction to Israel becoming a state. Right away there was an invasion by armies of five Arab nations (594). The Jews had to face the possibility of genocide because of the hatred that the Arab nations surrounding Israel had towards Jewish people.