Language:
English
Year of publication:
2002
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Modern Jewish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
1,2 (2002) 131-149
Keywords:
Ben-Gurion, David,
;
Arendt, Hannah,
;
Eichmann, Adolf,
;
War crime trials History 20th century
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
Israel and the diaspora History
;
Jews Attitudes toward Israel
Abstract:
The Eichmann trial was held during a period of ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, disagreements between Israeli and American Jewry, and internal cleavages and tensions in Israeli society. The capture of Eichmann aroused a debate between Israeli and American Jewish leaders concerning Israel's right to judge Eichmann and to represent the whole of the Jewish people. The trial succeeded in constructing a version of Jewish history able to unite the Jews of Israel as well as to unite diaspora Jews with the Jewish state, and to show the prewar and wartime Zionist leadership as prescient. Dwells on Ben-Gurion's conception of the trial and of its main messages. Hannah Arendt's narrative "Eichmann in Jerusalem" was opposed to this conception. Paradoxically, however, Arendt's work only reinforced the sense of boundary of the Jewish collective and helped to incorporate American Jewry into it. In 1967 Israel confronted the Six-Day War united with the American Jewish community by a sense of common history.
DOI:
10.1080/1472588022000029352
URL:
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