Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel’s Founding Story

276 Pages·2010·3.219 MB·English

by  M.M. Silver

Our
Exodus
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M. M. Silver
Our
Exodus
Leon Uris and the Americanization
of Israel’s Founding Story
Wayne State University Press Detroit
© 2010 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Silver, Matthew.
Our Exodus : Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel’s founding story / M. M. Silver.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8143-3443-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Uris, Leon, 1924–2003. 2. Uris, Leon, 1924–2003. Exodus. 3. Jews—United States—
Attitudes toward Israel. I. Title.
PS3541.R46Z88 2010
813’.54—dc22
2010002650
Publication of this book was made possible through the generosity of the Bertha M.
and Hyman Herman Endowed Memorial Fund.
Designed and typeset by Maya Rhodes
Composed in The Sans and Sabon
For Mel
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Contents
Introduction 1
1. Contextualizing Exodus 13
2. Exodus and Jewish History 35
3. Exodus and the Americanization of Israel 109
4. After Exodus 151
Acknowledgments 225
Notes 229
Index 255
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Introduction
The divorce of history from literature has been as calamitous for Jewish as for general
historical writing, not only because it affects the very image of the past that results.
Those who are alienated from the past cannot be drawn to it by explanation alone; they
require evocation as well.
—Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, 100
I believe it will be like a breath of spring air for the American people to meet Mr. Ari Ben
Canaan, the fighting Jew who won’t take shit from nobody.
—Leon Uris in a letter to his father, June 25, 1956
It took the Jews close to 1,900 years, after the destruction of
the Second Temple, to reestablish a state of their own in the land of
Israel. It took them fifty years, after Theodor Herzl convened the first
Zionist Congress, to convert the Jewish statehood program into a
reality. It took them ten years, after the declaration of Israel’s estab-
lishment in May 1948, to explain the founding rationale and circum-
stances of the Jewish state in terms readily apprehensible to masses of
fair-minded persons around the globe. This last ten-year period—the
story of how the Jews told their biggest modern story—remains un-
charted territory, virtually a secret history.
Curiously, little attention has been paid to the way Israel’s found-
ing story was packaged and popularized for the world at large. After
centuries of messianic yearning and decades of concentrated political
activity, the Jews had a complicated, inspiring story to tell. Its suc-
cessful telling did not defy cultural logic. In view of the sickening facts