The US Presidency and American Jewry from FDR to Trump, livre ebook

Eight decades of presidential policies and how they shaped American Jewish identity and history

The first book to explore how American presidents have responded to and shaped issues central to Jewish Americans across eighty years, The US Presidency and American Jewry from FDR to Trump traces presidential actions and their effects on both American Jewish political life and the evolution of the US-Israel relationship.

Featuring current scholarship by leading historians, the essays in this volume begin by analyzing key episodes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s role in US and global responses to the Holocaust and turn to Harry Truman’s policies on safe haven for Holocaust survivors and his support for the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Next, chapters analyze how presidents continued to back Israel while often pursuing policies that frustrated both Israeli and American Jewish communities, reflecting broader Cold War, diplomatic, and regional pressures. The volume concludes with an exploration of how Israel became an increasingly partisan issue in US politics during the administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Together, these chapters offer valuable long-range insight into the complex intersections of presidential leadership, American Jewish history, and US-Israel relations.

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction
Patricia Kollander

Chapter 1. FDR and the War Refugee Board
Rebecca Erbelding

Chapter 2. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the Use of NGO Diplomacy to Resettle Refugees in Venezuela and Mexico
Beatrice Dain

Chapter 3. FDR, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestine Question
Norman J. W. Goda

Chapter 4. FDR and the Winding Road to Nuremberg
Richard Breitman

Chapter 5. Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America
Beth B. Cohen

Chapter 6. Truman vs. the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA During Israel’s Moment, 1945–1949
Jeffrey Herf

Chapter 7. The Other War: American Jews, Lyndon Johnson, and the Great Society
Marc Dollinger

Chapter 8. The Presidency and the Yom Kippur War of 1973
Jill E. Hopkins

Chapter 9. Israel, Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union, and the Nixon Administration, 1969–1974
Noam Kochavi

Chapter 10. The Forgotten Legacy of Jimmy Carter: The Holocaust Memorial Museum and How It Changed America’s Understanding of the Holocaust and Jewish Self-Understanding
Shaul Magid

Chapter 11. Clash of Remembrance: Reagan, Bitburg, and American Jews
David B. Morris

Chapter 12. The Evolution of US-Israel Relations from George W. Bush to Donald J. Trump
Ziv Rubinovitz

Afterword
Alan L. Berger

List of Contributors

Index