ABSTRACT
Romanian Communist leaders had begun de-Sovietization as early as the 1950s: not out of liberalism but out of the desire to create a distinctively Romanian brand of Communism. Ceausescu made great use of unsubtle nationalist demagoguery, which in the early 1970s became what political analysts called "Ceausism", "National Communism", or "Xenophobic Communism". This new ideology incorporated both disguised and explicit anti-Semitic elements. This new ideology incorporated both disguised and explicit anti-Semitic elements. This was a pragmatic anti-Semitism that avoided Soviet propaganda elements such as anti-Zionism and the myth of a world Zionist threat. The Jews were compensated by relative freedom of religious organization and the ability to make aliya openly. Meanwhile, Romania maintained diplomatic and tourist relations with Israel and remained in close contact with the American Jewish community and world Jewish organizations. Moses Rosen had an ambiguous, often difficult, relationship with Jewish intellectuals. Jewish intellectuals refused his model of Judaism, considered too parochial, lacking a real cultural dimension.
