Chapter 12: A New Jewish World, 1950-1980
Study Questions
1) How had the views of the Catholic Church changed towards the Jews by the mid-1960s? What reforms did Vatican Council II under Pope John XXIII initiate?
2) What significance did the Eichmann trial in 1961-1962 have for Israeli Jews as well as Jews in other countries? Was this significance the same for all?
3) How did the Jews retain their identity as Jews in the Soviet Union in the face of official opposition and the resulting absence of any Jewish community life?
4) In what ways did Jews become more assertive in the post-World War II world in championing community rights in their respective countries, according to Gartner?
5) In what ways can the United States be described as a Jewish success story?
6) How did the migration of Jews from the big American cities to the suburbs in many ways alter Jewish community life? Did all Jews make the move?
7) Gartner mentions the high rate of intermarriage with non-Jews (one in three) in the United States by 1980. Is this the “price” of American freedom and the fading of prejudice? Given the size of the Jewish population in the United States, is it a cause for alarm, satisfaction, or indifference?
8) Reviewing Gartner’s discussion of the flow of Jewish immigrants from around the world to Israel since its founding in 1948, would you say Israel is culturally more European or more “Eastern” or do such descriptions not apply (see pages 421-423)?
9) What is a kibbutz? Can one say that the kibbutzim are simply eastern European-style communist communities transplanted to Israeli soil? Why or why not?
10) What kind of state is Israel? A multi-party democracy? A theocracy? An oligarchy? Other? Give the reasons for your choice.
11) Why are the West Bank settlements on land seized in the 1964 Six Day War so controversial? How did that war differ, if at all, from the one which wrest what became the state of Israel proper from the British in 1948?
12) What was so significant, according to Gartner, about the transfer of power from the Labor Party to the rightwing Zionist Herut Party and the National Religious Party (Mifdal) in 1977?
13) What does the sociopolitical and economic framework of a nation-state contribute, if anything, to the history of a people?