Jonathan Sarna

Almost a quarter of a millennium ago, on April 13, 1783, the pioneering Savannah, Georgia patriot, Mordecai Sheftall, wrote to his “dear son” Sheftall about the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution.
“Every well-wisher to his country must feel himself happy to have lived to see this long and bloody contest brought to so happy an issue,” he wrote. “Thanks to the Almighty, it is now at an end . . . an intier [entire] new scene will open itself, and we have the world to begin againe.”
As we contemplate a new ceasefire and perhaps the end

A comparative study of contemporary Israeli and Palestinian diasporas. Exilic and diasporic experience have become ubiquitous in recent decades. Jews, lacking a homeland, spread to various parts of the world, making the Jewish diaspora paradigmatic. But after the establishment of Israel in 1948, a different kind of diaspora emerged, as more than a tenth of Israeli citizens have chosen to leave their newly established state and resettle. Meanwhile, about half of all Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, now reside in exile, predominantly as a result of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Recognizing that Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab societies coexist and are engaged in constant relations, Nahum Karlinsky has assembled an impressive array of contributors to explore these diasporas alongside one another and in dialogue with other diasporic communities. The collected essays cover such topics as Palestinian exiles and diasporas, the demographics of today's Israeli diaspora, immigrant enterprises, transnationalism and development, the unique place of Israeli Jews in the United States, the literature of Palestinian transnationals, and the emergence of Berlin as a queer Israeli-Jewish immigrant enclave.The Modern Israeli and Palestinian Diasporas challenges and reimagines the very notion of a homeland.

The English phrase “Next Year in Jerusalem,” which appeared in no American Passover haggadah prior to 1942, took on new meaning following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. It was reinterpreted again following the 1967 Six Day War, reflecting the impact of the reunification of Jerusalem upon diverse segments of the American Jewish community. Subsequently, American haggadot employed the phrase on behalf of Soviet Jews and in other freedom-related contexts; it also came to embody the maddening complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict. As the phrase became a marker of audience, religious commitments and politics, translations and interpretations of the original Hebrew declaration grew increasingly fraught and complex. The appearance, disappearance, translation, illustration and interpretation of “Next Year in Jerusalem” testifies to its significance not only within the haggadah but also within the larger religious, cultural and political life of the American Jew.

The history of American antisemitism was, for many years, a taboo subject. The Jewish lay leader and scholar Cyrus Adler, longtime president of the American Jewish Historical Society, insisted in 1898 that he did "not believe it exists" and had "entire confidence in the impossibility of its ever existing on the soil of the United States."1 The word "antisemitism" did not even appear in the index to the Historical Society's first 20 years of publications. Koppel Pinson's path-breaking volume entitled Essays on Antisemitism (1946) likewise excluded America. Revealingly, in 1947, a scholarly article dealing with antisemitism that did appear in the Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, by Rabbi Leonard A. Greenberg, opened with an elaborate justification. "We can," it explained,
no longer dismiss anti-Semitism with a wave of the hand or a flourish of the pen. As an influence in American Jewish life -- although a negative one to be sure-its study comes within the scope of this Society's activities.2

Both in his focus on the “essentially collective” nature of happiness in Judaism, and in his privileging of simcha over ashrei, the better-known biblical term for happiness, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks differed from others who have studied the Jewish view of happiness. Nahum Sarna, writing about the Psalmist; Hava Tirosh-Samuelson in her survey of pre-modern Jewish philosophy; and Michael Fishbane, in his study of “The Inwardness of Joy in Jewish Spirituality” all highlighted the individualistic nature of happiness in Judaism, with special emphasis on Torah study, pursuit of wisdom, and commitment to a way of life governed by God’s teaching. By contrast, Rabbi Sacks, operating in a world that views happiness as a natural condition, the way we are all intended to be, looked to counteract the paradoxical elusiveness of happiness in contemporary times. His solution was to focus on relationships. The Psalmist, the philosopher, the mystic—they had lived in different times and settings. Rabbi Sacks, living as he did amid “the acquisitive individualism of our late capitalist, postmodern order,” concluded that “the resilience of simcha, the joy that exists in virtue of being shared,” could provide Jews and non-Jews alike with “the ever-renewable promise of hope.”