THE APPEAL OF ISRAEL

178 Pages·2011·0.55 MB·English

THE APPEAL OF ISRAEL:
WHITENESS, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND THE ROOTS OF
DIASPORA ZIONISM IN CANADA

by

Corey Balsam

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Master of Arts

Graduate Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

University of Toronto

© Copyright by Corey Balsam 2011
THE APPEAL OF ISRAEL:
WHITENESS, ANTI-SEMITISM, AND THE ROOTS OF
DIASPORA ZIONISM IN CANADA

Master of Arts 2011
Corey Balsam

Graduate Department of Sociology and Equity Studies
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto

Abstract
This thesis explores the appeal of Israel and Zionism for Ashkenazi Jews in Canada. The
origins of Diaspora Zionism are examined using a genealogical methodology and analyzed
through a bricolage of theoretical lenses including post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and
critical race theory. The active maintenance of Zionist hegemony in Canada is also explored
through a discourse analysis of several Jewish-Zionist educational programs. The discursive
practices of the Jewish National Fund and Taglit Birthright Israel are analyzed in light of
some of the factors that have historically attracted Jews to Israel and Zionism. The desire to
inhabit an alternative Jewish subject position in line with normative European ideals of
whiteness is identified as a significant component of this attraction. It is nevertheless
suggested that the appeal of Israel and Zionism is by no means immutable and that Jewish
opposition to Zionism is likely to only increase in the coming years.

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Acknowledgements
This thesis was not just written over the duration of my master’s degree. It is a product of
several years of thinking and conversing with friends, family, and colleagues who have both
inspired and challenged me to develop the ideas presented here. I want to thank a few of my
close friends – Lia Tarachansky, Ben Saifer, and Diana Ralph – without whom I may have
never had the courage or tenacity to follow this academic and life path; my two brothers,
Adam and Joel, to whom this thesis is dedicated, for accompanying me on this explorative
journey and for always sharing their thoughts and perspectives; my mom, Leslee, and my
partner, Jenna, for being so incredibly supportive and for always helping me work through
my ideas; my dad, Dave, for challenging me to strengthen my arguments; and my
grandmother, Cecelia, who has never quite accepted my views, but has always tried, and
always supported me. A special thanks goes to my supervisor, Sheryl Nestel, for giving so
much of her time and energy to this project, and for providing me with so much knowledge,
feedback, and books (!). It was truly an honour and a privilege. Last but not least I want to
acknowledge all of the helpful feedback I have received from Jessica Pinto, my brother Joel
Balsam, and David Mandelzys, as well as from professors Sherene Razack, Monica Heller,
and Abigail Bakan. Thanks so much to all of you!

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For my brothers: Adam and Joel

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Table of Contents

Introduction: My Journey to the Dark Side .........................................................................1
Research Focus and Field of Study ................................................................................................... 9
Piecing Together a Framework ......................................................................................................... 12
Methodology .................................................................................................................................... 19
Chapter Organization ........................................................................................................................ 23

Part One

Chapter One: Diaspora Zionism ..........................................................................................26
Defining Diaspora ............................................................................................................................. 28
Nationalism: The French, the Germans and the Jews ....................................................................... 31
Zionism in the Canadian Jewish Diaspora ........................................................................................ 46
Diaspora Zionism .............................................................................................................................. 57

Chapter Two: New Jews and Old Jews: Past and Present ..................................................65
Freud and the Jewish Male Body ...................................................................................................... 68
Redemption through Regeneration ................................................................................................... 75
The Impact of the Holocaust on Support for Zionism ...................................................................... 80
New Jews and Old Jews in the Age of Israel .................................................................................... 87
The Thing of the Nation .................................................................................................................... 91

Chapter Three: The Quest for Whiteness ............................................................................95
Beyond Skin Colour.......................................................................................................................... 97
Jewish Bodies, White Masks ............................................................................................................ 101
The Whiteness Test ........................................................................................................................... 107
Israel, Relationality, and the Arab Threat ......................................................................................... 113
“I'm not white, I'm Jewish” ............................................................................................................... 121

Part Two

Chapter Four: Engineering Consent ...................................................................................129
The Jewish National Fund ................................................................................................................ 132
Taglit Birthright Israel ...................................................................................................................... 142

Conclusion: Rupture .............................................................................................................156

Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................166

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INTRODUCTION
My Journey to the Dark Side

I remember the goose-bumps I used to get whenever I heard that simplistic yet
powerful Hebrew chorus: Am Yisrael chai! “The People Israel—the Jewish People—live!”
This past year during his Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) sermon, the rabbi at my parents'
synagogue explained that Am Yisrael actually has various interpretations. It can connote the
Jewish people, meaning everyone defined as Jewish; it can refer to the ancient people of
Israel who lived 2000 years ago in the land of Canaan; and it can mean all good people,
whatever their religion, so long as they abide by basic precepts of human decency. I
appreciated the rabbi's universalistic interjection. Jewish approaches to religion and life in
general have historically oscillated between particularism and universalism,1 but it has
seemed that the former has been outweighing the latter in recent years.
Indeed, it is the particular, the Jewish people, which is the reference in Am Yisrael
Chai. It is an intonation that emphatically evokes the need to hold on to and have pride in
Jewish identity; especially in the face of the enemy. Believed to have originated in the 1930s
amongst Jews in defiance of the Nazi rise to power, the chorus was later revived during the
1960s by “Reb” Shlomo Carlebach for use in the student struggle to liberate Soviet Jewry.2
Today it is most commonly sung at Zionist rallies in support of the state of Israel. But the

1 See, for instance, Svante Ludgren, Particularism and Universalism in Modern Jewish Thought
(Binghampton, NY: Global Publications, 2001).
2 Jacob Birnbaum, “Am Yisroel Chai: Shlomo Carlebach's Version and Earlier Versions,” Chazzanut, May
2003, http://www.chazzanut.com/articles/on-am-yisraeil.html.

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essence of the message remains the same: we are Jews and we are proud.
The first time that I remember singing Am Yisrael Chai was on my first visit to the
state of Israel when I was 19. I can vividly recollect the intense rush of excitement and
emotion that I felt. There was something about chanting this song with my peers that made
me feel different, empowered, strong. I loved it.
Like many of my Jewish peers in Canada, my grandfather, Zaida as we called him in
Yiddish, is a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. He is the only survivor in his immediate family
and one of the few from his small Polish village to have made it out alive. He was strong, I
suppose, and healthy, but above all he was lucky. Anyone who has heard accounts of
Holocaust survivors can attest to the sheer luck one needed to have to make it out of so many
close encounters with death. I first heard my grandfather's story when I was 16. He was not
the type to have talked about his experiences to anyone. But when my younger brother asked
him to tell us about our family and about his life, he agreed. I had heard many stories of
survivors by then, but none so incredible, and none so traumatic, at least to me personally.
My family had been receiving magazines in the mail from the Simon Wiesenthal
Center around the time that I visited my Zaida in Montreal with my brother. The magazines
detailed the threats Jews continued to face around the world from anti-Semitism. I had not
previously been aware of this vulnerability. I was tormented periodically for being the
“Jewish kid,” seen as intrinsically weaker and cheaper than others as a consequence of my
Jewishness, but I had not felt myself in any real danger. As far as I knew there was no one out
to get me, so why worry? Thinking back to the magazines and looking at the materials of the
Wiesenthal Center today, there is no questioning the sensationalist, propagandistic approach
3

of the organization. But at the time I was as politically aware as most other 16 year olds in
the suburbs. The magazines were, in my mind, proof that Jews remained a vulnerable group
in society as they had been in the Europe of my Zaida's adolescence.
It was not until September 11, 2001 that I really became conscious of politics and of
the media. Like virtually everyone else at the time, I spent an entire week in front of the
television, watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN rehash the collapse of the Twin Towers over and
over again, postulating as to who the culprits were. All signs pointed to “the Arabs”; Islamic
terrorists who hated the West and reviled Jews. Apparently they were not such an isolated
group. Many Arabs felt this way. I had many Arab friends growing up including a few
Palestinians, so what I heard troubled me. I was uncomfortable believing that my friends and
their families had some deep rooted hatred for me but I was not prepared to dismiss the idea
either.
So began my interest in the Middle East. I was not an avid reader at the time. I much
preferred skateboarding and hanging out with my friends. This topic, however, really
compelled me. The first book that I bought was a collection of works by and about Islamic
fundamentalists. It was one of those books produced in the aftermath of 9/11 to teach the
masses about their new enemy—a top seller at the bookstore. Within the pages of the book
were various pieces concerning Palestinian terrorism against Jews. One piece that especially
affected me described the 1929 Hebron Massacre of Jews by a group of Palestinians who
went on a murderous rampage following the circulation of rumours that Jews had been
killing Palestinians elsewhere.3 The sheer brutality of the massacre as it was described and

3 Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Hill
4

the language used to talk about Jews by the contemporary fundamentalists featured in the
book sent shock-waves through my teenage psyche.
Angered at what my grandfather was forced to endure and enraged at the apparent
ceaselessness of anti-Jewish oppression and hatred, my reaction was to transform how I saw
my Jewishness, hitherto uninteresting and more or less mundane, into a Jewishness of pride,
strength, and desire. I remember wanting to get a tattoo on my arm in the same place and in
the same font as that of a Nazi concentration camp inmate, except instead of numbers it
would read םײח, my Hebrew name meaning “life.” It was as if to say to the Nazis, “you tried
to get rid of us, but we're still here, living and proud.”
My attempt at re-envisioning my Jewish persona again took me back to the bookstore.
This time I picked up a book called Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams4 by
Rich Cohen, a chronicle of the lives of Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky and Bugsy
Siegel, who, like Italian mobsters, seemed to be the very embodiment of coolness. As it
turned out, Bugsy Siegel and I had the same birthday, and, I liked to think, similar features.
But beyond loading me with some interesting pieces of historical trivia to challenge
stereotypes of Jewish weakness, and, I must say, a good costume for Halloween, there was
little that Jewish gangsters from the 1930s could do to help bolster my Jewish image.
Enter Israel. My childhood attendance at a mainstream Jewish afternoon school meant
that Israel had always been a part of my Jewish identity. I planted trees every year with the
Jewish National Fund, learned Israeli songs and dances with my fifth grade teacher, and
spent time learning Hebrew from the Israeli teachers in the school. But my interest in Israel

and Wang, 1993), 319.
4 Rich Cohen, Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).
5

was not really sparked until after 9/11 when I was about 17 or so. It was at this point that I
came to see Israel in a different light. No longer simply a land of religious and historical
significance, Israel became a place where being Jewish meant being strong, cool and proud—
exactly the Jewish identity that I sought for myself.
By the end of high school I could not wait to see Israel for myself. Taglit Birthright
Israel was just the opportunity I was looking for: a free 10-day trip to Israel for Jews my age
to see the “homeland.” In preparation for my trip I thought it would be a good idea to learn a
bit more about the place that had so captivated my attention. I had heard that there were
problems there, that there was a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and even that
Palestinians were treated unjustly by the Israeli government and military, but the extent of
my understanding was minimal.
I returned to the bookstore, this time to find a book on the history of the conflict.
There was a multitude of books that seemed to express and defend one side or the other. So
instead of choosing one of those, I tried to find one that looked as neutral as possible. My
pick was the newly-updated version of journalist David Shipler's Arab and Jew: Wounded
Spirits in a Promised Land,5 a beautifully-written journalistic-style book packed with
personal and historical details pertaining to the conflict and the region. Looking through the
pages of Shipler's book now, I realize that he really only scratched the surface with respect to
Israel's troubling history; but at the time, it was enough to have opened my eyes to the
severity of injustice perpetrated by the state of Israel against the Palestinians.
I continued reading the book throughout my Birthright trip during the few rare

5 David Shipler, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land (New York: Penguin, 2001).