The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History 
Description
PREORDER
by Jack Ross
From the new foreword by the author: I began work on this book in 2008, all of 23 and adrift . . . drawn to the subject of the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), the “Classical Reform” tradition it represented, and its polarizing-at-best titular spokesman Elmer Berger, for making sense of . . . the profound and lasting impact that the disastrous “global war on terror” would have on American Jewish identity. . . Of the founders of the ACJ generally, contrary to their reputation as reactionary assimilationists preoccupied with “dual loyalty,” the record clearly shows that their principal motivation was horror at how American Judaism would be profoundly compromised and corrupted by the inevitable rise of something like the Israel lobby. However vast any superficial differences, they shared with 21st century Jewish anti-Zionists the fundamental conviction “Not In Our Name.”
Dramatic changes are taking place with respect to the views of the American Jewish community toward Israel and Zionism. Since the Second Intifada and the involvement of the Israel lobby in precipitating the Iraq War in the 2000s, and now Israel’s widely condemned wars that followed the October 7th massacres, large swaths of the American Jewish community have been disenchanted with Israel and Zionism as at no other time since the founding of the State of Israel.
However, anti-Zionism in America has a long history. Elmer Berger was undoubtedly the best-known Jewish anti-Zionist during most of his lifetime, particularly from World War II through the 1967 Six-Day War and its aftermath. A Reform rabbi, Berger served throughout that period as the executive director of the American Council for Judaism, an anti-Zionist organization founded by leading Reform rabbis.
This biography was first published in 2011 and is being re-released by Sublation Media for its renewed relevance for a wide audience.
