Shulamit Reinharz looks back and forges ahead

Once we had Emma Lazarus, Golda Meir and Henrietta Szold. Who are the next American Jewish women to influence Zionism? And what will be the shape of Zionism in the future?

Those were two of the questions posed by professor and author Shulamit Reinharz during a lecture on Wednesday evening, Nov. 16, at the Golda Meir Library on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

One event in the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center’s Jewish Book & Culture Fair, the program was part of the UWM Faye Greenberg Sigman Lecture Series.

In Milwaukee to talk about her two newest books, Reinharz spoke in this lecture on “American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise” (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England, hardcover $60, paperback $26), which she edited with Mark A. Raider, chair of the Judaic Studies Department and director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Albany.

As Brandeis University’s Jacob Potofsky Professor of Sociology and founding director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Women’s Studies Research Center, as well as general editor for the Brandeis Series on Jewish Women, Reinharz is considered a leading authority on American Jewish women.

Earlier in the day, she spoke to about 20 high school students at Congregation Beth Israel about the young Jewish women’s coming of age handbook, “The J Girl’s Guide” (Jewish Lights Publishing, paperback, $14.99), which she co-wrote with Penina Adelman and Ali Feldman.

Place within a place

In the evening, she talked about American Jewish Zionist women’s contribution to Zionism and the changing face of the Jewish nationalist movement.

Lazarus, Reinharz said, was the first American “to conceptualize [in her poem “Semite, Wake Up”] that there needed to be an alternative [for Jews] to the United States — a refuge” in case things didn’t work out here.

The emphasis of Zionism in this country shifted with the times and the concerns of its activists, she said, referring next to the practical, project-oriented Zionism of Szold and her followers, who focused on building infrastructure and fighting poverty in Israel.

Finally, Reinharz described the important but little-known Zionist activist Irma Levy Lindheim, a wealthy American Jewish activist who became a “self actualizing” Zionist. Lindheim came to believe that a Jew could only reach the full expression of his or her Jewish self in Israel.

With the context of a gradually changing Zionism in mind, Reinharz posed the question: “Is there a new definition of Zionism in the 21st century?

“All of the other ideas of Zionism think of Israel as an island, a place where Jews go to find themselves. But Israel is a place within a larger place — that place rejects us, to be sure — but we need to acknowledge the fact that a new definition of Zionism now is the effort to build a Jewish democracy in the Middle East among its neighbors. And it’s all doable,” she said.

Citing an example of what can be done, Reinharz elaborated on an exchange in progress between Brandeis University and the Palestinian Al Quds University, centered in Abu Dis, on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem.

Through the personal initiative and nurturing of its presidents, Yehuda Reinharz and Sari Nusseibeh, the two universities have set up exchanges between eight university departments.

And unlike previous attempts at connections between Jews and Palestinians, this exchange is based on the belief that each has a lot to give the other, Shulamit Reinharz said.

“The important thing is to have mutual exchanges and we, at Brandeis are going to study their system,” Reinharz said. “It’s not a one-way giving.”

Arguing that, like the European Union, “the whole notion of national boundaries will be changed in the future,” Reinharz challenged her listeners to move beyond conventional perspectives on the Israel-Palestine problem.

“Every one of these forms of Zionism [that she discussed from her book] was difficult” at the time it was conceived. Most people didn’t understand or support those ideas from the beginning, she added.

In addition, she said, “No wall is high enough to separate us forever. The only way to have contact with people is to take risks. We [Jews and Palestinians] must have exchange.”

The lecture was co-sponsored by the UWM Center for Jewish Studies and the Jewish Book & Culture Fair-JCC. It was further supported by the Faye Greenberg Sigman Lecture Series Fund, President’s Conference/Women’s Division/Milwaukee Jewish Federation, Hadassah-Milwaukee Chapter, Dr. Gary and Judy Guten Jewish Book Foundation Author Series, and the UWM Golda Meir Library.