ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that Israel and Zionism are the combined bete noire of Peter Novick's account of the career of the Holocaust in American consciousness. Under the impact of the cold war, Novick writes, American Jewish discourse about the Holocaust was necessarily "either muted or turned to anti-Soviet purposes". The real subject of Novick's book is not the Holocaust at all but rather the politics of memory. As a stranger to the inner life of Jews, Novick also demonstrates no feel for their habitual patterns of collective behavior. Since Novick labors so valiantly to defend Arendt's reputation but clearly fails to learn anything from Dawidowicz's example, a brief comparison may be in order. The best illustration of Novick's warped conception of American Jewish life is the striking contrast in his respective verdicts on Hannah Arendt and Lucy Dawidowicz. Lucy Dawidowicz, by contrast, spent half a lifetime researching and writing The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, which—to repeat—Novick fails to mention.
