Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel’s Founding Story PDF
Preview Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel’s Founding Story
Our Exodus This page intentionally left blank 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 This page intentionally left blank 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 This page intentionally left blank 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
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