Skip to main content

The Politics of American Zionism, 1967-2017

Date:
-
Location:
Hilary J. Boone Center
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s):
Noam Pianko

The Six Day War marked an important watershed moment in the history of the State of Israel. The 1967 war, and the questions raised in its aftermath, also transformed American-Jewish conceptions of Zionism, Israel, and the relationship between the two emerging centers of global Jewry. This talk explores the post-1967 evolution of American Zionism and the ways in which the disagreements sparked by the war continue to reverberate fifty years later. As we shall see, today’s increasingly polarized positions within the Jewish community, and the broader American population, about Israel’s place in American and American Jewish identity, has a complex, and often overlooked, history.

Noam Pianko is the Samuel N. Stroum Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor in the Jackson School of International Studies. Pianko also directs the Samuel and Althea Stroum Center for Jewish Studies and serves as the Herbert and Lucy Pruzan Professor of Jewish Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies/Judaic Studies from Yale University in 2004 and joined the Jackson School faculty as an Assistant Professor in the fall of that year.