Looking Back and Looking Forward

Professor Stephen Berk looks to the future through the prism of the past.

In 1948 the State of Israel was created.  The development of a ferocious anti-Semitism in Europe, long standing religious impulses, and the spread of nationalism to large segments of the Jewish population created the political movement known as Zionism.  Two world wars also played an important role in the creation of Israel.  The problems confronting the first Jewish state in two thousand years were huge.  Wars with neighbors, the difficulty of absorbing millions of immigrants and resolving the tensions between religious and secular

Jews were and remain the great issues facing the State of Israel.  Only the presence of gifted leaders and the help of a powerful ally saved the state from destruction.

a) Zionism, A History

b) Three Who Made Israel: Weizmann, Ben Gurion and Begin

c) Persia, Iran and the Jews

A Tale of Two Popes Pius XII and John Paul II

Zion in America: The American Jewish Experience

From the very beginning of Jewish settlement in the New World, Jews understood that America was a very different place.  Vast areas of arable land, the expanding frontier, a plethora of religions and races, and the influence of the Enlightenment created an environment in which Jews thrived. There was a price, however, that Jews had to pay for this unprecedented freedom.  To this day Jews have struggled with the question of how to remain Jewish in a society in which everything is open to them.  Assimilation, not anti-Semitism is the perennial problem confronting the American Jewish community.