ABSTRACT
The late Judd L. Teller once published in Commentary a striking analysis which anticipated many of the clichés of current discussions of American Zionism. 1 America, he said, had two distinct Zionist traditions, of which one was foreign — specifically, East European — and the other was “native,” and uniquely American. The style of native American Zionism was Romantic (or to use his term, “Messianic”), in contrast to the Social Realism of the Europeans; it was not based, like theirs, on a real need to achieve political enfranchisement, since American Jews were long since emancipated; and it was a Jewish reflection of the contemporary Social Gospel among liberal Christians. The pedigree of native American Zionism was long and distinguished, going back to Mordecai Manuel Noah and Emma Lazarus; but it was fully defined only in the course of Louis D. Brandeis' historic quarrel with Chaim Weizmann in 1920–21; and in the 1950's it became the consensus opinion of American Zionists in opposition to David Ben-Gurion's Israeli Zionism.
