ABSTRACT
The few prominent American Jewish intellectuals who have kept their commitments to participate in conferences and the like have been received in Israel with a gratitude in no way diminished by their own seemingly compulsive desire to bite the hand that (very lavishly) feeds them, by publicly “testifying” against Israeli policies. Of course, the intifada in its various forms has kept most Israelis too busy to worry about the mysterious absence of their American cousins. Now, the idea of America as a new Zion was a prominent theme of the Puritans who built the country; even the enlightened Thomas Jefferson wanted “Israel” on the seal of the United States. A much more ambitious attempt to relocate Jerusalem in a greener, more pleasant, and more peaceful place than the state of Israel is that of the leftist Leonard Fein, the founder and first editor of Moment magazine and a veteran fomenter-from-within of American Jewish agitation against Israel’s government.
