It’s The Real World After All: The American-Israel Pavilion–Jordan Pavilion Controversy at the...

E. A. Katz: It’s the Real World After All 129

* The author expresses appreciation to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a crucial guideto this essay from the beginning, and to Arthur Aryeh Goren, under whose tutelage theproject developed further. The work of both scholars is critical to understanding theAmerican-Israel Pavilion and the controversy over the Jordan Pavilion mural that eruptedat the Fair. Thanks are due also to Jack Wertheimer for his comments on an initial draft,and to Edna Nahshon for her insightful comments and patient editing.

1. “Israel Should Be at World’s Fair,” National Jewish Post and Opinion, November16, 1962, 2.

It’s the Real World After All:

The American-Israel Pavilion–Jordan Pavilion

Controversy at the New York World’s Fair, 1964–1965

E M I L Y A L I C E K A T Z *

In November 1962, upon learning of the State of Israel’s decision notto participate in the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the editors of theNational Jewish Post and Opinion warned its American Jewish readersof the crucial opportunity about to be squandered. “Money is beingspent to win public opinion in one way or another,” they observed.Furthermore,

We hope. . . that some way will be found to include an Israeli exhibit at theWorld’s Fair. . . . The Jews of the U.S. are inextricably bound up, mostcertainly from a goodwill standpoint, with whatever Israel does. This meansthat American Jewry stands to gain from an outstanding Israeli pavilion at theWorld’s Fair.1

The editors, it is clear, were well attuned to the heightened possibilitiesfor visibility, education, and interaction that the public space of world’sfairs afforded. Indeed, from the time of their formal inception withLondon’s Great Exhibition in 1851, world’s fairs have functioned ashighly symbolic arenas in which local, national, and international élitesstage nationalist visions and utopian vistas for a global audience.Selective distillations of the world-as-a-whole, world’s fairs and exposi-tions both shape and are shaped by the societies that nurture them;doubling as both simulacra and synecdoches of the “real” world, world’sfairs are idealized universes constructed, paradoxically but necessarily,from the stuff of contemporaneous reality. Thus, world’s fairs are notsimply mirrors of their times and places, but laboratories for activelyshaping politics and culture, history and identity. It is in this sense that

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130 A M E R I C A N J E W I S H H I S T O R Y

world’s fairs are “performative,”as performance studies scholar BarbaraKirshenblatt-Gimblett has demonstrated.2 The supranational and inter-national context of such fairs creates a “highly charged space for thenegotiation and enactment of mutual recognition”3—not only amongnations, but among groups and individuals at the fairs, in their capacitiesas exhibitors and visitors and as local, national, and global citizens.

Although Israeli officials declined to sponsor a national pavilion at theNew York World’s Fair in 1964, visitors eager to learn about Jewishhistory and the State of Israel could satisfy their curiosity at theAmerican-Israel Pavilion. At this privately-sponsored pavilion, the fruitof American Jewish money and effort, guests could wander fromSolomon’s Temple to medieval Spain, to colonial America and HasidicEastern Europe, ending their journey through Jewish history in thebustling port of contemporary Haifa. The pavilion exhibition wascomprised of dioramas stocked with authentic relics and historically-outfitted mannequins, as well as documents, maps, quotations, music,photographs, painting and sculpture—and Israelis, performing Yemenite-inflected pop music, serving up falafel, or guiding visitors through theeclectic displays.

Along with the ever-growing main exhibition, and replete with giftshops, a cafe, and a nightclub equipped with a pool and “Horaplatform,” the American-Israel Pavilion punctuated more than a centuryof Jewish participation in world’s fairs. Often, that presence was boundup with historical and symbolic associations of Jews with the Holy Land,itself a pervasive subject of display at world’s fairs and expositions,although usually seen through Christian eyes. Lacking a nationalimprimatur, Jews were initially largely invisible participants at world’sfairs, acting as behind-the-scenes promoters or appearing as the undiffer-entiated subjects of other national displays.4

The debut of the Jewish Palestine Pavilion at the New York World’sFair in 1939, directed by Zionist impresario Meyer Weisgal, marked asignificant departure from this tradition of invisibility. Though it offereda fresh opportunity to educate the world at large about Zionism and the

2. See especially Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Introduction,” and “ExhibitingJews,” in Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley, 1998); BarbaraKirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Performing the State: The Jewish Palestine Pavilion at the NewYork World’s Fair, 1939/40,” paper presented at the Dartmouth Regional Seminar inJewish Studies, May 6, 2001, quoted with the permission of the author; and BarbaraKirshenblatt-Gimblett, “A Place in the World: Jews and the Holy Land at World’s Fairs,”in Encounters with the “Holy Land”: Place, Past, and Future in American Jewish Culture,eds. Jeffrey Shandler and Beth S. Wenger (Philadelphia and Hanover, 1997), 60–82.

3. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Performing the State,” 3.4. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “A Place in the World,” and “Exhibiting Jews.”


Jewish settlement in Palestine, it accomplished in fact much more.Presenting itself as a national pavilion, a bold rhetorical gesture entailinga complicated ideological and diplomatic choreography on the part of itsorganizers, the Jewish Palestine Pavilion literally “perform[ed] the stateinto being” within the world of the Fair, before Israel existed as a nation-state in the real world.5 By 1964, of course, the State of Israel was areality, but in contrast to the Jewish Palestine Pavilion in New York andthe Israel Pavilion at Brussels in 1958, it was a reality organized anddisplayed by American Jews.

Mainstream America, in the meantime, was becoming ever morereceptive to the Jewish experience, embracing mythologized versions ofthe Jewish past and present that appeared on stage, in film, and in print.The phenomenal success of Exodus, first as a best-selling book (1958),then as a popular movie that grossed millions of dollars (1960), helpedmake Israel a staple of American popular culture in the years immedi-ately preceding the Fair.6 During the Fair’s two-year tenure, Fiddler Onthe Roof won the Tony Award for best musical, James Michener’s TheSource, a millennia-spanning fictional account of the land of Israel andthe Jewish people, and Dan Greenberg’s How To Be a Jewish Mothertopped the list of national best-sellers. The time was ripe for a publiccelebration in America of Israel’s achievements, and a confident displayof the American Jewish community’s hand in the young nation’striumphs. The American-Israel Pavilion, serving as the portal to aglorious Jewish past and a triumphant Israeli present and future, soughtto offer its visitors a transportive and transformative experience. Itsexhibits were designed to evoke wonder and stoke idealism, to elicitempathy and cultivate pride–in both the Diaspora experience and themodern nation of Israel.

But trouble lurked in the simulated paradise of the New York World’sFair. Reports surfaced soon after the Fair’s opening of a wall-sized murallocated in the government-sponsored Hashemite Kingdom of JordanPavilion, depicting an Arab refugee cradling her young child in her arms(figure 1). A poem scrolling along the left side of the painting nevermentioned Israel or Jordan by name or even used the word “refugee,”but its message was clear: Israel, since its advent, had sundered the livesof the land’s former Arab inhabitants and, pursuing methods to divertthe waters of the Jordan for its own projects, would sow further discordin the region. Written from the perspective of an Arab refugee child, thepoem appealed directly to the conscience of the viewer, begging him or

5. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Performing the State,” 2.6. Deborah Dash Moore, To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream

in Miami and L.A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 243.


her to “hear a word on Palestine” before leaving the pavilion and,perhaps, “to help. . . right a wrong.”

The contest over the meaning of the Jordan Pavilion poem and muralsparked a public struggle over the next two years among Fair bureau-crats, politicians, local and national Jewish leaders, Jordanian notables,and American citizens who visited the pavilions or read about thecontroversy. The battle itself was framed, variously, as a fight againstantisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment, against anti-Arab prejudice, and,for all parties, against encroachments on free speech. The Fair served asa critical arena for acting out Jordanian, Israeli, and nascent Palestiniannationalisms (the latter two by proxy) and for defining and embodyingwhat it meant to be American, for American Jews and Arab Americansalike in a new, postwar, post-independence world. The National JewishPost and Opinion was right: money was being spent to influence publicopinion, and every nation, corporation, or religious institution sponsor-ing a pavilion understood that powerful propaganda at the Fair wouldactively mold the world beyond the Flushing Meadows fairgrounds. Asuccessful pavilion would engender trust and goodwill toward anemerging nation, alter patterns of consumption, or win converts in thereal world beyond the unisphere that was the Fair’s symbol.

Fig. 1. The Jordan Pavilion mural. Courtesy of the Queens Borough PublicLibrary, Long Island Division, 1964/65 World’s Fair Collection.


This essay focuses on the “slippage between the world itself and theworld of the fair,” to borrow Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s formula-tion.7 For although the American-Israel and Jordan pavilions themselveswere embedded in a fabricated landscape devoted to “Peace ThroughUnderstanding,” as the Fair’s motto insisted, the strife that eruptedbetween the two pavilions’ organizers and supporters was real. Offeringtheir visitors competing national identities and mutually exclusiveversions of recent history, the two pavilions engaged in a heated battlefor the hearts and minds of the public. The New York World’s Fairafforded the organizers of both pavilions a resonant performative spacefor shaping American and international public opinion–as world’s fairshave always done. Flushing Meadows became contested territory forJewish and Arab Americans precisely because the stakes were so high.However ephemeral the buildings and streets of the Fair, the traces theyleft behind in the minds of visitors were potentially indelible.

Although tentative plans for exhibitions sponsored by various Ameri-can Jewish organizations, among them the United Synagogue Council,the National Council of Jewish Women, and the Jewish InformationSociety, were still under discussion as late as 1963, the prime focus forAmerican Jews eager to exhibit at the approaching world’s fair had bythen shifted to an Israel-related pavilion.8 Despite having conducted anational architectural competition for the pavilion design, Israel with-drew government sponsorship from the projected pavilion in 1962,ostensibly for financial reasons. Responding to a personal entreaty fromNew York City mayor Robert Wagner, David Ben-Gurion himselfcataloged the reasons for Israel’s withdrawal. Citing the financialburdens imposed by defense spending, the absorption of the massimmigration of Jews from Middle Eastern nations, and education costs,

7. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Performing the State,” 3.8. The United Synagogue Council withdrew for lack of funds. The Council had

intended to represent Judaism at the Fair, a world’s fair characterized, in fact, by its largenumber of religion pavilions and a range of Christian pavilions in particular. Letter fromNathan Straus III to Martin Stone, December 23, 1963, New York Public Library, NewYork World’s Fair 1964–1965 Corporation Records, 1959–1971 (hereafter NYPL), Box275, File PO.3: Israel-1962. For correspondence between the World’s Fair Corporationand other American Jewish organizations seeking exhibition space, see NYPL, Box 341,File P3.7: Jewish Organizations.


the prime minister deemed the price ($3 million, at that point) too steep.Better no pavilion than an inadequate one, he explained.9

Sponsorship was assumed by the newly-incorporated American-IsraelWorld’s Fair Corporation, an offshoot of the American-Israel Chamberof Commerce and Industry, which counted a distinguished list ofAmerican Jewish businessmen among its members and leaders. Inaddition to representing Israel, Jews, and Judaism, Corporation officialsdetermined the pavilion would further the goals of the American-IsraelChamber of Commerce: to raise demand and broaden the market forIsraeli products. The outdoor gift shops and galleries were conceived asan integral part of the pavilion experience. The director of the Corpora-tion, Harold Caplin, projected that $8 million in Israeli arts and craftsand souvenirs would be sold in the two years of the Fair’s operation.10

The opportunity was immense. But, as a member of the board averred,the event in Flushing was “not simply a trade fair,” a place to hawkproducts and services from Israel.11 It was also to be a place of culturalexchange. It would be a forum for educating visitors about Jewishcivilization, particularly “in relation to the Holy Land and the era of theOld Testament,” a theme that was clearly meant to resonate with a non-Jewish audience.12

9. Correspondence between various Israeli officials and those of the World’s FairCorporation raises the possibility that Israel’s decision was not purely economic in nature.The BIE (Bureau International des Expositions) had chosen to deny the New York World’sFair official status because it was slated to open so soon after the formally-sanctionedSeattle World’s Fair of 1962. Israel may have been following protocol in declining to jointhe Fair, as did many other nations that refused to participate in an official capacity. Anexasperated Robert Moses, in internal memoranda, was the major figure to express hissuspicion that the economic rationale was a red herring, and that Israel was deferring to theBIE. NYPL, Box 275, File PO.3: Israel-1962.

Spain was the only major European country to sponsor an official national pavilion;however, many developing nations (primarily in Africa and Asia) found the Fair a welcomeplatform and contributed government-sponsored pavilions, including India, Pakistan,Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Guinea, SierraLeone, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, Mexico, and, of course, Jordan. See John E.Findling and Kimberly D. Pelle, Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions,1851–1988 (New York, 1990), 322–28.

10. Harold S. Caplin, “American-Israel Pavilion–Cooperation for an Unusual Project,”speech before an American-Israel Chamber of Commerce luncheon, April 17, 1964, NYPL,Box 275, File PO.3: Israel-Brochures.

11. From comments by Nathan Strauss III, “American-Israel World’s Fair Corpora-tion,” 6. NYPL, Box 275, File PO.3: Israel-Brochures.

12. “Dedication Ceremony at the New York World’s Fair 1964–1965 American-IsraelPavilion, October 14, 1963,” 6. NYPL, Box 275, File PO.3: Israel-Brochures.


The American-Israel Pavilion was to be located in the InternationalArea, at the intersection of the Avenues of Africa and Asia. Guinea,Sudan, and Sierra Leone were close by; its nearest neighbors to the eastincluded the Sermons From Science and the Christian Science pavilions.Though Israel was at last a full national participant within an interna-tional context, the pavilion’s placement near the religiously-themedexhibition halls hearkened back to the a-national, religious categoriza-tions of Jews at previous fairs, and the legacy of Holy Land exhibits aspatently religious, rather than geo-political, in nature. The pavilion’sorganizers embraced and telegraphed the dual status of Israel as HolyLand and modern state, ancient birthplace and current guarantor of thevaunted “Judeo-Christian” tradition, a creation of ecumenical andJewish defense organizations of the 1930s and 1940s seeking to routantisemitism and fascism by offering American pluralism and democracyas the guardians of Western civilization. The organizers of the American-Israel Pavilion thus kept both Jewish and non-Jewish visitors firmly inmind.13

The dedication ceremony for the building in October 1963 presenteda perfect opportunity for its organizers and supporters to parse themeaning of the American-Israel Pavilion. The ceremony opened with aninvocation by Rabbi Harold Gordon, who cast the American relation-ship with Israel as a marriage of equals.14 Caplin, for his part, yokedAmerican Jewish involvement with Israel to the immigrant underpin-nings of the American nation.15 Senator Kenneth Keating of New York,meanwhile, addressed the old-new nature of the young state of Israel andits freighted symbolic status in his remarks at the dedication ceremony,noting that “the contributions to the Western world from the area whichis today Israel actually started. . . thousands of years ago, for it is thisHoly Land of Israel which contributed the origin of. . . Judaic-Christianethics.”16 The pavilion, and by extension, Israel itself, embodied theethical heritage of Western civilization generally, and, more specifically,the religious legacy of Judaism.

The main exhibition hall, designed by Israeli set designer Zvi Geyra,was divided into three parts: ancient Israel, the Diaspora, and modernIsrael. Occupying an intermediate position between the glory of ancientIsrael and the advent of the modern state, the Diaspora segment of the

13. On the invention of the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, see Moore, To The GoldenCities, 18, and Henry L. Feingold, A Time For Searching: Entering the Mainstream(Baltimore, 1992), 256–59.

14. Ibid., 3.15. Ibid., 4.16. Ibid., 7.


exhibition, meticulously-crafted scenes depicting representative examplesof world Jewries throughout history at work, study, and play, wasaccorded a somewhat ambiguous status. On the one hand, the contem-poraneous Israeli “master commemorative narrative” of Jewish historydemanded that the exilic period comprise a kind of liminal zone betweenthe periods of political sovereignty,17 but on the other hand, theAmerican Jews who organized the pavilion needed to accord the rest ofJewish history–life in the Diaspora–its own worth. The inclusion ofcheerful Diaspora tableaux, the antithesis of a lachrymose narration ofJewish life in galut, signaled to the viewer that life in the Diaspora was,in fact, culturally viable.

Indeed, the Holocaust, a tragic chapter of recent Diaspora history,was mostly absent at the American-Israel Pavilion. In August 1964, tocommemorate the twentieth anniversary of her arrest and deportation bythe Nazis, the pavilion did house a display of two original pages fromAnne Frank’s famed diary. They were exhibited next to another historicaldocument from the Holocaust, a bleak poem salvaged from the Warsawghetto, written in Hebrew by a young woman named Rachel Silkina.Displayed “in memory of the millions of Jews who perished in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II,” as a press release noted,18 thepoem and diary pages appear to have been the sole references to theHolocaust in the pavilion. Obviously, its organizers did not view theexhibition as a platform for raising awareness of the Holocaust orremembering its victims. Its tone, rather, was overwhelmingly optimistic.

Of course, the final segment of the pavilion exhibition providedanother opportunity to fulfill specifically American Jewish imperatives.Detailing the genesis of the State of Israel with documents and photo-graphs, and offering an up-to-the-moment portrait of the country’sindustry, architecture, commerce, scientific, and cultural achievements,the last section consisted of exhibits sponsored by American organiza-tions, often with an emphasis on American contributions to Israel. Thetour ended beneath a monumental sculpture entitled “Together,” by ZviGeyra, the pavilion’s designer (figure 2). Suspended eight feet above theground, “Together” depicted workers heaving irrigation pipes overhead,a muscular symbol of Israel’s striving to make the desert bloom. Geyracreated the work specifically for the occasion of the 1964 World’s Fair;the American-Israel Pavilion was, after all, an opportunity to educate

17. The term is Yael Zerubavel’s; see Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and theMaking of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago, 1995), 3–12.

18. “Original Anne Frank Letters on Display at American-Israel Pavilion,” undatedpress release, NYPL, Box 275, File PO.3: Israel-Brochures.


visitors about Israel’s continuing projects and needs, primary amongthem the effort to harness the region’s scarce water supply.

For the organizers of the American-Israel Pavilion, its hyphenatedappellation and identity signified the deep affinities between Judaism,Jews, and America. In their estimation, a renascent Israel would fortifythe bonds among Jews themselves, while strengthening ties betweenJewish and Gentile Americans. The overarching strategy for the pavilionexhibition was to cast the Land of Israel as the cradle of the West’sethical and religious traditions, and the modern State of Israel, enlight-ened, progressive, and democratic, as heir alongside America to thischerished legacy. Unremittingly sanguine about the Jewish past, present,and future, whether it be in Israel or in the Diaspora, the American-IsraelPavilion aimed to be all things to all people.

Significantly, the American-Israel Pavilion was not the only one tooffer visitors this appealing blend of spiritual heritage and modernmettle. The pavilion’s not-too-distant neighbor to the north, the HashemiteKingdom of Jordan Pavilion, also billed itself as the birthplace ofWestern religion and worthy successor to the region’s ancient cultures.

Fig. 2. The sculpture “Together” by Zvi Geyra in the American-Israel Pavilion.Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Long Island Division, 1964/65World’s Fair Collection.


While the American-Israel Pavilion showcased a column from theCapernaum synagogue, where Jesus was said to have preached, anddisplayed translations of the Hebrew Bible into many languages, theJordan Pavilion housed stained glass depicting the Passion of Christ anddisplayed fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Whereas the American-Israel Pavilion offered a model of Solomon’s Temple, the Jordan Pavilionincluded bas-reliefs of the ancient city of Petra and the Dome of the Rockin Jerusalem. At one, visitors could order hummus with pita and watchthe Yemenite Trio perform Israeli songs. At the other, guests couldpartake of the same meal, followed by entertainment by “a troupe ofArab dancers and the Band of the Arab Army” or by a half-hour longfilm on modern Jordan, both at the pavilion’s theater.19 Each pavilionjuxtaposed ancient civilization with the contemporary nation-state,universalizing the significance of their pavilions, especially for the benefitof American Christians. In a further parallel, the organizers of each actedas proxies for other groups. American Jews spoke for Israelis on the onehand, and the Jordanian government spoke for the Arab refugees,through the mural, on the other.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the Jordan Pavilion mural was,in fact, its seamless conflation of the Jordanian political agenda and theplight of the Arab refugees. Relations between Israel and its neighborswere particularly tense in the months before the Fair’s opening. Inresponse to Israel’s plans to irrigate the Negev with water diverted fromLake Tiberius (fed by the Jordan River), the leaders of the Arab Leagueconvened in Cairo in January 1964 to formulate their opposition. At theconference, they approved plans to divert the sources of the Jordan Riverand, to that end, pledged military unity between the armies of Syria,Lebanon, and Jordan, a significant show of solidarity for a circle ofleaders with considerable political differences. When the Fair opened inApril, Israel had not yet commenced its irrigation project, but the muralpoem sounded a dire warning about Israeli designs on the Jordan River.And yet, the major theme of the poem was not the struggle over waterrights, in which Jordan was deeply embroiled, but something decidedlymore emotionally stirring. As the poem stated:

Before you go,Have you a minute more to spare,To hear a word on PalestineAnd perhaps to help us right a wrong?

Ever since the birth of ChristAnd later with the coming of Mohammed,

19. Time, Inc. Official Guide New York World’s Fair, 1964–1965 (New York,1964),162.


Christians, Jews and Moslems, believers in one GodLived together there in peaceful harmony.

For centuries it was so,Until strangers from abroad,Professing one thing, but underneath, another,Began buying up land and stirring up the people.

Neighbors became enemiesAnd fought against each other,The strangers, once thought terror’s victims,Became terror’s fierce practitioners.

Seeking peace at all costs, including the cost of justice,The blinded world, in solemn council, split the land in two,Tossing to one sideThe right of self-determination.

What followed then perhaps you know,Seeking to redress the wrong, our nearby neighborsTried to help us in our cause,And for reasons, not in their control, did not succeed.

Today, there are a million of us.Some like us but many like my mother,Wasting lives in exiled miseryWaiting to go home.

But even now, to protect their gains ill-got,As if the land was theirs and had the right,They’re threatening to disturb the Jordan’s courseAnd make the desert bloom with warriors.

And who’s to stop them?The world seems not to care or is blinded still.That’s why I’m glad you stoppedAnd heard the story.20

Consistent with the Jordan Pavilion exhibition as a whole, the poemopened with an evocation of the interreligious harmony of the distantpast, a move that underscored the universal import of the region’s fate.Meanwhile, Jordan’s primary complaint, Israel’s plans to tap the JordanRiver, appeared only in the penultimate stanza; the bulk of the poemcomprised a moral drama about abuse and miscarried justice, with theunnamed State of Israel as the villain, aided, unwittingly, by a negligentworld.

20. Full text of poem printed in Arab News and Views, June 1964 (no page number).


The poem’s tone of high sentimentality was mirrored by the muralitself. A gauzy image of a mother and child fill the foreground, thewoman’s eyes downcast, her face shadowed with grief. The child, thoughprotected within her mother’s embrace, exudes innocent suffering; gazingout into the middle distance, a look of anxiety plays across her delicatefeatures. The image recalls depictions of the Madonna and child inWestern art, an association that was surely strengthened by the Christianiconography elsewhere in the pavilion.21 To the left beneath the poem, aloosely-rendered landscape of spires, domes, and low, square rooflinesglimmers in the far distance, just out of reach. Hardly an aestheticmarvel, the mural served nonetheless as the visual embodiment of thesentiments expressed by the poem’s speaker.22 An indictment from themouth of a babe-in-arms, the mural and poem were accessible, bothphysically and intellectually, to any visitor to the Jordan Pavilion.

Notice of growing consternation over the Jordanian mural surfacedfirst in a New York Times article on April 25, 1964, which characterizedthe developing tension as a poisonous spillover of Middle East discordinto the world of the Fair.23 Citing Jordan’s mural as anti-Israelpropaganda, officials at the American-Israel Pavilion dispatched atelegram shortly after the Fair’s opening to Robert Moses, president ofthe World’s Fair Corporation, demanding its removal. According to thearticle, the message stated,

We are shocked and disturbed to learn that the Jordan pavilion has used itspremises at the fair to spread propaganda against Israel and its people. Theuse of the fairgrounds for the dissemination of such propaganda runs counterto the spirit of the fair as expressed in its theme “Peace Through Understand-ing” and counter to the regulations of the fair.

American-Israel Corporation president Zechariahu Sitchin reiterated thepoint a few days later in a second telegram, which cited a violation of theFair’s legal duty to bar “the operation of an exhibit which reflects

21. The mural also calls to mind another sanctified pair, Hagar and Ishmael (biblicalrefugees and, according to Islamic tradition, forebears of the Arab people), an allusionparticularly apropos in this context. I am indebted to Edna Nahshon for suggesting thisassociation.

22. As yet, I have not uncovered the authorship of the poem or the mural painting; thereis no reference to the mural’s authorship in the Jordan Pavilion participation files in theNew York World’s Fair 1964–1965 Corporation Records, in the substantial correspon-dence about the controversy, or in the press.

23. Martin Tolchin, “Jordan’s Exhibit Assailed By Jews,” New York Times, April 25,1964, 12. The article did not mention the immediate political backdrop: the strugglebetween Israel and Jordan over water rights to the Jordan River.


discredit upon any nation or state.”24 Moses refused to bow to theAmerican-Israel Corporation’s demands, repeatedly expressing the senti-ment that the Corporation and its supporters were exacerbating a minormatter, and urging all parties to tone down the growing debate. In hisofficial response to the American-Israel Pavilion, Moses noted themural’s political tone, but insisted that the Fair could not censor thepoem or painting, even if the theme was “subject to misinterpretation.”He concluded that, “no good purpose would be served by exaggeratingthe significance of this reference to national aims or attributing racialanimus to it.” By the summer, however, the Fair Corporation hadhardened its line. Branding the anti-mural clamor as an assault on theprinciple of free speech, the Fair claimed that censorship of the JordanPavilion would be unconstitutional and “alien to American principles.”25

In City Hall and on the streets of the Fair, the drama continued toescalate. Mayor Wagner called for the mural’s dismantling; Jordanpromised to close its pavilion if pressed to remove it.26 The City Council,in turn, sought legally to prohibit the public display of “any materialwhich portrays depravity, criminality, unchastity or lack of virtue of aclass of persons of any race, color, creed or religion,” in a measure thatsoon passed.27 When the American Jewish Congress, an organizationwhose political ideology embraced both cultural pluralism and Zion-ism,28 requested permission to picket the Jordan Pavilion, Moses por-trayed his refusal as a defense of the Fair’s honor. “We shall not licensepicketing,” he announced, “to encourage international incidents in a fairprimarily devoted to promoting friendship through increased under-

24. Telegram from Sitchin to Moses, April 27, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3:Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.

25. “Fair Rejects Plea on Jordanian Mural,”New York Times, April 26, 1964; “WagnerSays World’s Fair Will Remove Jordan Pavilion’s Controversial Mural,” New York Times,April 30, 1964; Philip Benjamin, “Fair Bars Protest Over Mural; Moses Calls forUnderstanding,” New York Times, May 15, 1964; John G. Rogers, “That Mural and ‘FreeSpeech,’” New York Herald Tribune, July 1, 1964.

Moses did in fact censor at least one exhibition. He demanded that Andy Warhol’sThirteen Most Wanted Men, which was mounted on the exterior of the Fine Arts Pavilion,be whitewashed. Moses deemed it too provocative. See Helen A. Harrison, “Art for theMillions, Or Art for the Market?” in Remembering the Future: The New York World’sFair From 1939 to 1964 (New York, 1989), 137–66.

26. Martin Tolchin, “Jordan Threatens to Close Fair Pavilion If Controversial Mural IsRemoved,” New York Times, May 1, 1964, 18.

27. Charles G. Bennett, “Removal of Jordan Fair Mural Is Sought in City Council Bill,”New York Times, May 8, 1964, 42.

28. See Stuart Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for CivilLiberties (New York, 1997), for a good account of the distinctive character of theAmerican Jewish Congress.


standing.”29 (The ban on picketing, in fact, was initially a response toopening-day civil rights demonstrations by the Congress of RacialEquality, which protested against the hiring practices of some of thecorporate and state exhibitors and agitated for the passage of the civilrights bill pending in Congress.)30 Moses also rejected requests madeshortly thereafter by Arab Americans to picket the American-IsraelPavilion, on the same grounds.

In the meantime, the Anti-Defamation League branded the muralantisemitic and petitioned the New York State Supreme Court to forcethe closing of Jordan’s pavilion.31 Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkolcanceled his visit to the Fair, wishing to prevent further hostilitiesbetween the warring pavilions.32 On May 26, twelve leaders of theAmerican Jewish Congress, including the organization’s president, JoachimPrinz, and folk singer Theodore Bikel were arrested on the fairgroundsfor demonstrating unlawfully and for disorderly conduct.33 And inperhaps the most bizarre turn of events, the national flag was stolen fromthe Jordan Pavilion in the middle of a June night, the flag of Israelhoisted in its place.34

The American-Israel Pavilion answered what they saw as Jordan’sexplicit propagandizing with changes in its own exhibition. In early May,a cannon used in the Israeli War of Independence surfaced in a display.Harold Caplin, for his part, penned a parody of the Jordan Pavilionpoem, which appeared in the exhibition space and was printed at thefront of the souvenir guide. His poem lauded the blood, sweat, anddreams of the Israelis, “brothers who suffered the fanatic’s terror/Learning to work and live in harmony.” He ended by saluting all theAmerican-Israel Pavilion’s neighbors at the Fair. “We degrade them not,”the poem promised, “and ask the same in return.”35

The argument that the mural violated the spirit of the Fair was echoedagain and again in the anti-mural letters and postcards from AmericanJews that poured into Moses’s office. People wrote to him from all overthe country, although the majority were residents of the New York

29. Philip Benjamin, “Fair Bars Protest Over Mural; Moses Calls for Understanding,”New York Times, May 19, 1964, 34.

30. Walter Carlson, “12 Jewish Leaders Arrested at Fair,” New York Times, May 26,1964, 29.

31. “Suit Asks Closing of Jordan Exhibit,” New York Times, May 21, 1964, 45.32. Robert Alden, “Israel Premier Cancels Fair Visit in Dispute Over Jordan Pavilion,”

New York Times, May 23, 1964, 27.33. Carlson, “12 Jewish Leaders Arrested at Fair.”34. “Israeli Flag Is Raised at Jordan’s Pavilion,” NewYork Times, June 9, 1964, 27.35. Souvenir guide (no page number), NYPL, Box 275, File PO.3: Israel-Brochures.


metropolitan area.36 Many emphasized they were New York Citytaxpayers or veterans of the United States army, or the wives and widowsof veterans. Many who expressed extreme displeasure had actuallyvisited the Fair; others who had read or heard about the controversypromised never to visit or threatened to cancel planned trips in protest.Some wrote as individuals, while others wrote under organizationalbanners, from the Vallejo, California, chapter of Hadassah to the JewishInformation Society of America based in Chicago, to the Jewish LaborCommittee of the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area. Still others signedpetitions condemning the Fair.

Those who sent in complaints sought to highlight the egregiousness ofJordan’s violation by referring to events in recent history or currentworld affairs. For one complainant, the Jordan Pavilion mural conveyedan ideology as prejudiced as Southern racism and as doctrinaire as Sovietcommunism:

It is obvious that Jordan is carrying on through this exhibit a polemic againstthe Jewish people and the State of Israel. If Jordan is being given this privilege,contrary to the purposes of the Fair, then any nation could proceed to aircontroversies and its own particular ideology at the Fair, perhaps the Russiangovernment against Capitalism, Mississippi against civil rights for Negroes.These propaganda messages have no place at the World’s Fair.37

A Montana rabbi, on the other hand, compared the Jordan Pavilion’smaneuvers to Nazi tactics:

This hate campaign, though seemingly directed only against Israel and the 5million American Jewish citizens, has been exploited. . . to blackmail theUnited States, by keeping the Middle East turbulent–for the profit of Nasser’simperialist ambitions, and that Communism might “fish in troubled waters.”I recall that Hitler’s hatred campaign originally was also directed merelyagainst the Jews–only at the beginning, as a camouflage toward World War II. . .this is not even a question of CENSORSHIP but of elementary RESPECT tothe host country and to civilized humanity.38

36. Nearly half the Jewish population of the United States in 1964 resided in the NewYork metropolitan region, defined as “New York City, its immediate suburbs, and severalcounties in New York and New Jersey.” The American Jewish Committee, AmericanJewish Year Book 1965, eds. Morris Fine and Milton Himmelfarb (New York, 1965),140–41.

37. Letter from Joseph B. Meranze, Chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee of thePhiladelphia Metropolitan Area, to Moses, June 30, 1964. NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3:Jordan-Israel Pavilion-Controversy-Public Reaction/M.

38. Letter from Rabbi Samuel Horowitz of Congregation Beth Aaron[?] of Billings,Montana, to Robert Moses, May 4, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3: Jordan-IsraelPavilion-Controversy-Public Reaction/H.


Those challenging the mural condemned the Jordan Pavilion (andMoses’s decision to leave the mural standing) not only as outraged Jews,but as angry American citizens. Hadassah president Lola Kramarskyshared the logic of the great bulk of protesters, when she affirmed thatthe mural was “offensive not only to those of us who are Jews but toAmericans everywhere who seek peace through understanding.”39 FromOklahoma City to the Bronx, the message was essentially unanimous:the mural espoused hatred and prejudice against Israel and Jews, anddirectly violated the internationalist spirit of the Fair. The solution wasclear to those who wrote to Moses: remove the mural, and help restorepeace to the world within and outside the Fair.40

Aside from American Jewish individuals and organizations, someAmerican politicians also took note of the controversy. They, too,underscored the destabilizing influence of what they considered to beflagrant propaganda. Emanuel Celler, chairman of the Committee on theJudiciary of the House of Representatives, testifying that the mural wasshocking and unpleasant to “people of all creeds,” sounded a note ofcaution. “Were I to draw an analogy of a Soviet Union Pavilion on ourfairgrounds,” he offered, “bearing a message addressed to the WesternWorld, ‘We will bury you,’ would you not agree that such a statement ofhostility would be out of place?”41 Ernest Gruening, a senator fromAlaska, considered the Jordan exhibition a matter of national concern,certain to exacerbate matters in the Middle East by inciting “nationagainst nation and people against people.”42

A smaller number of groups and individuals wrote to Moses express-ing their support for his refusal to dismantle the mural. The AmericanFriends of the Middle East, for example, defended the mural as brave

39. Copy of speech given by Lola Kramarsky, president of Hadassah, on Child’s Dayfor Youth Aliyah (May 6, 1964). Hadassah Archives, American Jewish Historical Society,File: World’s Fair-General.

40. Occasionally a concerned citizen would offer an alternative solution. The FairCorporation files contain a copy of a letter sent by Charlotte B. Caldicott of Tuckahoe,New York, to the editor of the New York Journal-American, suggesting the following: “Inan effort to peacefully solve the matter of the mural, I would like to suggest–a companionmural–depicting the attainment of the hoped for friendly cooperation in that troubled land.We could not sweep under the rug, murals of our early settlers crowding the Indians out oftheir hunting grounds, we are still trying to correct our errors, so if it takes time and sincereeffort, be not discouraged.” Letter, May 23, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3: Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.

41. Letter from Celler to Moses, May 19, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3: Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.

42. Letter from Gruening to Moses, June 25, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3: Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.


and truthful. In a letter to Moses, the president of the organizationdenied the mural’s alleged offensiveness and lauded the pavilion’s effortsto direct attention to the situation of Arab refugees in Jordan andneighboring countries.43 The Christian Anti-Defamation League sent aletter questioning the patriotism of indignant American Jews. Accordingto the organization, permission to picket the fairgrounds should bedenied the American Jewish Congress on the grounds that, as a Zionistorganization, it accorded prime patriotic allegiance to Israel rather thanthe United States. Permission to demonstrate, the letter argued, shouldhave been requested from the State Department instead.44

The American Council for Judaism, one of the few remaining bastionsof anti-Zionism among American Jewry, defended the Jordan Pavilionmural as a sober observation of political facts. Executive vice presidentElmer Berger considered the mural a welcome wake-up call to Americansgenerally and American Jews in particular. In Berger’s estimation, abenighted American Jewish public had unwittingly supported, throughmonetary contributions first to the Yishuv and then to Israel, a “foreignnationalistic campaign to establish a foreign state,” whose victory in1948 was built on terrorism. Having been led astray by Zionist groups,he continued, American Jews were blind to the fact “that their ‘charity’to assist ‘Jewish refugees’ [was] helping finance the Israeli diversion ofthe Jordan River,” a program sure to foment “political, economic andeven military crises in the Middle East.” At any rate, he argued, theAmerican public should have the right to make up their own mindsabout the political situation in the region.45

Berger was particularly angered by the Anti-Defamation League’sefforts to bring the New York World’s Fair Corporation before the NewYork State Supreme Court for supporting the Jordan Pavilion’s right todisplay the mural. Lambasting the ADL’s assertion that the mural was anantisemitic diatribe, Berger challenged the ADL’s claim to speak forAmerican Jewry. Berger’s support was fully embraced by Moses and byformer New York State governor George Poletti, a vice president of the

43. Letter from Alford Carleton to Moses, May 1, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3:Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.

44. Letter from Roy Anderson to Moses, May 18, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3:Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation. According to its letter-head, the Christian Anti-Defamation League was an organization “dedicated to theupholding and preservation of Christian ideals through combating various forms of anti-Christian philosophies, and atheistic publications, that tend to deprecate and defameChristian faith, morals and ethics.”

45. Letter from Berger to Moses, May 28, 1964, NYPL Box 277, File PO.3: Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.


World’s Fair Corporation, who used his arguments to buttress their casebefore the State Supreme Court and to rebut those who wrote to Mosesin complaint.46

The sparse but forceful voices of Arab and Arab American organiza-tions and officials added a further dimension to the defense of the JordanPavilion. Mustafa Zein, vice president of the National Organization ofArab Students, sent an angry telegram to Moses in late May of 1964,having just witnessed a demonstration outside the Jordan Pavilion.Shaken by the protesters, thirty to forty individuals by his count, whoseactivities, he insisted, could not “be put into decent words,” Zeinexplained that “this and many other incidents are wearing out thepatience of Arab students in the United States. It makes us wondersometimes if we are living in America or Israel.” Zein concluded the brieftelegram with a personal appeal to Moses to maintain a fair and openmind about the mural’s display. He was contacting Moses, Zein con-tended, simply “to demonstrate for the thousands [sic] time our sinceredesire to bridge the gap of misunderstanding between the Americanpeople and our Arab nation.”47

Abdul Monem Rifai, Jordan’s ambassador to the United Nations, senta letter to his American counterpart describing the increasingly hostilewarnings the Jordan Pavilion had received since the stolen-flag incident,including telephoned threats to bomb or burn down the pavilion. Rifaiheaped condemnation on the “hostile activities of a certain group ofcitizens in New York who are trying to make a case out of the ‘Mural ofthe Refugees’ in the pavilion.”48 Like Zein, Rifai expressed bafflement

46. The ADL was anxious that Berger and the American Council for Judaism’sinvolvement in the court action be exposed and challenged. The American Zionist Council,heeding the ADL’s call, sent letters to the 250 members of the Board of Directors of theWorld’s Fair Corporation decrying the Corporation’s use of Berger’s letters to Moses asproof that the ADL did not represent the will of American Jewry. The letter noted that theAmerican Council for Judaism “is an organization representing a minute fraction ofAmerican Jewry, which has been repudiated not only by the central bodies of theOrthodox, Conservative and Reform Rabbinate, but also by all other responsible AmericanJewish organizations. . . . The acceptance by the Fair Corporation. . . of the support of theAmerican Council for Judaism in this matter and its republication of Mr. Berger’s letters inan affidavit submitted to the Court must be considered a gratuitous insult even greater thanthat delivered by the Fair’s refusal to order the removal of the mural.” Notes, meeting ofthe American Zionist Council, July 8, 1964, and letter, July 10, 1964, Hadassah Archives,American Jewish Historical Society, File: World’s Fair-General.

47. Telegram from Zein to Moses, May 25, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3: Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.

48. No mention of such threats was made in the press. Letter from Rifai to FrancisPlimpton, June 11, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3: Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.


and indignation that the anti-mural protests had reached such intensity.For both, the behavior of the American Jewish protesters was anaberrant manipulation of all that America was supposed to stand for,particularly freedom of expression, and a pernicious effort to swaypublic opinion on the Middle East.

One particularly outspoken critic of the American-Israel Pavilion’srole in the controversy was Dr. Mohammed Mehdi, an Iraqi immigrantand Berkeley Ph.D. who established the American Arab RelationsCommittee in 1964, specifically in response to the agitation against theJordan Pavilion mural. Charging the American-Israel Pavilion with“propaganda and insult” against Arabs as well as Americans,49 Mehdirequested permission from Moses to picket the American-Israel Pavilion.He decried the hybrid nature of the “anomalous pavilion,” neitherAmerican nor Israeli, and he, too, depicted the struggle as a test ofAmerican liberty. As he wrote to Moses,

We would not have raised the issue except for Zionist totalitarianism which isas intolerant as fascism or communism. Full of hatred against the Arabs, theIsraeli-Americans behaved as if they were in Israel and not in the midst of anopen society. We resent Zionist endeavors to remove Jordan’s mural. Freedomof expression must be protected despite Zionist intolerance.50

It was most unfortunate, Mehdi opined, that “an intolerant minorityshould cause unnecessary trouble” at an otherwise magnificent world’sfair.51

The mural affair garnered some notice in the mainstream press.52 Nopublication devoted more space to the matter, however, than the NewYork Times, which charted the controversy from beginning to end in itspages. Aside from tracing the mounting conflict and its widening cast ofcharacters, the Times focused particular attention on the arrests of thetwelve members of the American Jewish Congress and the court hearingthat followed. The day after the arrests, the newspaper offered a blow-by-blow account of the attempted picketing and resulting arrests.

49. See also “Suit Asks Closing of Jordan Exhibit,” New York Times, May 21, 1964,45.

50. Original telegram quoted in press release newswire (no date), NYPL Box 277, FilePO.3: Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.

51. Telegram from Mehdi to Moses, May 22, 1964, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3:Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.

52. “Impassioned Middle East Feud Breaks Out at the Fair,” Life Magazine, May 8,1964, 41; “Hussein Goes to the Fair–And Suddenly It’s Chilly,” New York Post, April 24,1964, 3; John G. Rogers, “That Mural and ‘Free Speech,’” New York Herald Tribune, July1, 1964, 20.


Surrounded upon their arrival at the Jordan Pavilion by police, reporters,photographers, and television crew, the group, led by AJC presidentJoachim Prinz, was never actually able to demonstrate. Prinz, confrontedby the police, admitted his intention to demonstrate without a permit.Informed that defiance would result in arrest, Prinz retorted that, “in theexercise of our constitutional rights, we shall picket.” Indeed, en route tothe pavilion, Prinz had earlier proclaimed his determination to protest inthe face of opposition. “I have been arrested before,” the Times reportedhim saying, “by the Gestapo–so I am not afraid of that.” The scuffleunfolded just as celebrations got under way at the Jordan Pavilionmarking Independence Day of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The court hearing following the protesters’ arrests encapsulated thetension arising from the collision of the real world and the world of theFair. After hearing arguments in Queens Criminal Court, Judge BernardDubin ruled in favor of the accused, stating that the picketers were infact peaceful and, furthermore, were entitled to disobey the police ifpolice directives were unlawful. While the attorney for the New YorkWorld’s Fair, Pincus Berkson, argued that bans on demonstrating wereintended to preserve the safety of the public, Howard Squadron, specialcounsel to the AJC, insisted that the streets of the Fair were public innature. Angrily dismissing Berkson’s assertion that the Fair provided“neither the time nor the place for political picketing,” Judge Dubinchallenged him to examine the hypocrisy of his own argument:

It’s all right to put something up that is provocative and offensive if you havea million dollars to set up a pavilion, but if you only have $2 to pay for anadmission you can’t raise even once the slogan, “Thou shalt not bear falsewitness”? Aren’t you taking a risk by allowing a Jordan Pavilion to put up asign that will excite people? Why do you allow such a thing? Isn’t that arisk?53

Dubin ruled, ultimately, that the Fair was a quasi-public forum, itsstreets, in essence, city streets. Picketing was indeed lawful, and for bothsides.

In fact, the AJC hearing was but one of more than two-hundred casesin the summer of 1964 centered on the legality of demonstrations by civilrights and anti-Vietnam War activists at the World’s Fair. One of the firstcases heard–and dismissed–by Judge Dubin was that of four civil rightsdemonstrators who had been found guilty of trespass and disorderlyconduct at the Florida Pavilion, also on the supposition that the Fair was

53. Will Lissner, “Ban on Picketing at Fair Attacked,” New York Times, July 24, 1964,25.


private property. The four young Florida women who appeared forsentencing, two black and two white, were released by Dubin with akind of liberal benediction. “This court can see no justification for a jailsentence or a fine,” Dubin remarked. “I suspend sentence on eachdefendant–God bless you.”54 The decision to acquit the members of theAJC was, for Dubin, clearly part of a larger mandate to uphold theconstitutional right to demonstrate in public.

The mural controversy was also taken up by the Jewish press, which,albeit briefly, introduced the topic to their readers in editorials. TheReconstructionist and the American Zionist, for example, addressed thematter in a few sentences, alerting their readers to the presence of themural and the intransigence of the New York World’s Fair in refusing toremove it from the Jordan Pavilion. “The mural incites strife,” theReconstructionist stated, “and prevents understanding by distortion andfabrication.” The editorial expressed further anxiety, noting that “re-ports indicate that otherwise intelligent Americans are easily misled byJordan propaganda.”55 A piece in Hadassah Magazine, “The AmericanHousewife Goes to the Fair,” was by far the most personal account of thepavilions and the controversy, with the author describing her visits toboth pavilions, as well as the civil rights protests that marked the Fair’sopening.56

Congress Bi-Weekly, published by the American Jewish Congress,devoted somewhat more space to the cause in its “Timely Topics” newsroundup. Its May 1964 piece opened with notice of Mayor Wagner’sefforts to remove the mural from the Jordan Pavilion, and offered hisstance as in stark contrast to that of Robert Moses. The bulk of theeditorial, in fact, was dedicated to criticizing Moses’s role in theproceedings. His rationale for preserving the mural, namely, that “exag-gerating the significance” of the mural was a uselessly inflammatoryexercise, came under particular scrutiny. Moses, in endeavoring to shieldthe Fair from controversy, was willfully ignoring the simple fact that itwas too late to do so; in the editors’ estimation, Jordan had released theevil genie of strife and propaganda at the Fair. As the editorial stated,

54. Murray Illson, “Rights Cases Jam Court in Queens,” New York Times, June 18,1964.

55. “In Brief,” The Reconstructionist 30 (May 15, 1964): 6, “Scanning the News,” TheAmerican Zionist 54:6 (May 1964): 1. See also “Viewing the News,” Near East Report 8(May 5, 1964): 37.

56. R.G. Michaels, “The American Housewife Goes to the Fair,” Hadassah Magazine45 (May 1964): 25.


Mr. Moses’s plain obligation was not to assess the effectiveness or ineffective-ness of Jordan’s propaganda, but whether its mural did violence to his own–and wise–regulations designed to prevent the Fair from becoming an interna-tional cockpit. His disingenuous observations on the Jordan mural, hissoft-pedaling of its manifest intent, was rather strange in view of the fact thatthe Jordan pavilion officials were blunt about it. One official quoted by theNew York Times asserted “that all pavilions are propaganda. We are notagainst Jews but we are against Israel and the foreigners who took our homesand property.” The Arab states for many years have been emboldened to floutrules applicable to all other nations, and to export their anti-Israel biaswithout hindrance, precisely because officials like Mr. Moses wish to avoidtrouble.57

Wondering at Moses’s demurral in the face of blatant prejudice, theeditorial concluded by praising Mayor Wagner’s “bold stand” againstthe Jordan Pavilion. A mere two weeks later, of course, the AmericanJewish Congress took its own outspoken stand, picketing the pavilion indefiance of Moses.

A particularly boisterous tone was adopted by one Yiddish-languagenewspaper, whose editorial is preserved as a clipping, without attribu-tion, in the New York World’s Fair Corporation files. Entitled “Well-picketed,” the editorial lauded the American Jewish Congress’s effortsand expressed hope that not only organizational leaders but also Jewishyouth would take to the picket lines. As it stated, “Two and a halfmillion Jews in New York will not let them spit in our kasha. Let us seewho is stronger: the Jews of New York with the law on their side, orRobert Moses with his chutzpah?” The battle, the editors claimed, hadjust begun.58 On the other hand, the New York Hebrew-languagemagazine Ha-Do’ar took a rare skeptical view of the protests in itsinterpretation of events. In addition to briefly covering the arrest andacquittal of the AJC picketers, it published a full editorial on the“Incident at the Fair,” as it called the flare-up, in which it scolded theAmerican Jewish Congress for its self-important rhetoric and for draw-ing more attention to the Jordan Pavilion than it ever would have wonon its own merits. Not only the propagandistic mural but the stridentcounterstrategies of the American-Israel Pavilion and the AmericanJewish Congress threatened to tarnish the true character of the State ofIsrael, the editorial charged. The gravity of current politics in the MiddleEast, the recent muscle-flexing of the Arab League being a case in point,demanded a more serious and less inflammatory effort to engage

57. “Arab Propaganda at the Fair,” Congress Bi-Weekly 31 (May 11, 1964): 4.58. “Gut Gepiket: Shluss fun editoriel zayt,” clipping, NYPL, Box 277, File PO.3:

Jordan-Israel Pavilion Controversy/Special Events-Participation.


American Jewry and sway world opinion than picketing a second-ratepavilion at the World’s Fair. 59

In addition to the Jewish press, Arab News and Views, an English-language journal published by the Arab Information Center in New YorkCity since 1954, gave extensive coverage of the swirling controversy. Thejournal devoted two pages of its June 1964 issue to the topic, includinga printing of the full text of the poem accompanying the mural. Theeditors presented the controversy as a crass Zionist effort to embarrassKing Hussein of Jordan during his visit to the United States and to castaspersions on the Jordan Pavilion generally. It branded this effort aresounding failure, for “the Zionist machinery did not take into accountthe attachment of the American public to the truth and to the desire ofhearing both sides of the story.” Rather than driving visitors away, thejournal maintained, the controversy had brought a great deal ofattention to the Jordan Pavilion, exposing American citizens to analternative version of recent Middle Eastern history. Citing an article inthe New York Times that presented ambiguous reactions to the mural onthe part of some visitors, the journal proclaimed its faith in the Americanpublic, who were “interested and eager to learn the facts.” Taking theNew York City Council resolution as an exemplar of “Zionist tactics,”the journal pilloried the language and intentions of its proposed statute:

This maneuver serves as an excellent example to the American publicillustrating the campaign of Zionist propaganda and distortion launchedagainst the Arabs, not only over this incident, but for the past 15 years. TheAmerican public is asked to believe that the presentation of the Arab point ofview, and the portrayal of the misery of refugees living on internationalcharity is tantamount to “depravity,” “criminality,” and “unchastity.” This isindeed an excellent example of pressure politics and a Machiavellian distor-tion of good into evil. This time, however, Zionist propaganda has made a bigmistake. The mural is there for all to see. The American public has a clearvision and an honest conscience. No amount of Zionist pressure can affectthat.60

And in the August 1, 1964 issue of Arab News and Views, readersthemselves voiced their own disgust. Responding to the American-IsraelPavilion’s parody of the Jordan Pavilion poem, several readers sent thejournal their own rhymed rebuttals to the new poem, in which they

59. Y.Ts., “Ha-Takrit Ba-Yarid,” Ha-Do’ar, June 5, 1964, 498–99. The Israelinewspaper Ha’aretz briefly noted the arrest of the AJC leaders as well. See “N’etzru 13 [sic]minhagim yehudim she-hifginu li-yad ha-beitan ha-yardani,” Ha-aretz, May 26, 1964, 1.

60. “Mural Bearing Facts Agitates Zionists,” Arab News and Views, June 1964 (nopage number).


chastised Israel for hoarding land, creating disharmony, and expellingthe country’s former peace-loving inhabitants.61

By the time the Fair closed in the autumn of 1965, the controversyhad simmered to a kind of unending, low level of hostility. The lastnotices of discord in the New York Times are almost farcical: a scuffleoutside the American-Israel Pavilion between members of the AmericanArab Relations Committee as they passed out leaflets against IsraelBonds and an incensed group of Café Israel musicians and dancers; anda spurned al fresco lunch of bologna sandwiches and Israeli beer left forthe pro-mural contingent, with a sign reading, “For your misguidedpickets–kosher food, compliments of the American-Israel Pavilion.”62

Despite the protests, resolutions, and legal wrangling, the World’s FairCorporation prevailed, and the mural was left intact, if not in peace.

As historian Arthur Aryeh Goren has argued, American Jews in thepostwar period coalesced around two critical and related imperatives: tosafeguard the young state of Israel, and to secure the liberal promise ofAmerica for all her citizens. This “functional consensus” was predicatedon a particular American narrative about the alternately cataclysmic andeuphoric events of the mid-century, a story of destruction and redemp-tion in which democracy, buttressed by a sober but tolerant religiosity,served as the shining hero. The State of Israel was loaded with symbolicweight, “as both a haven for the persecuted and a doughty democracysurrounded and threatened with destruction” from its totalitarianneighbors and an acquisitive Soviet Union.63

The “Golden Decade” for American Jews that followed World War II,as Goren called it, was marked not only by increasing affluence, socialwell-being, and religious affiliation, but by a developing sense of politicalresponsibility at home and abroad. Jewish communal and religiousorganizations metamorphosed in the space of a decade from ad hoc

61. “The Loud Echo of Jordan’s Mural,” Arab News and Views, August 1, 1964 (nopage number).

62. Tania Long, “Fight Breaks Out in Dispute at Fair,” New York Times, May 1, 1965,63; and Long, “Fair Arabs Spurn Kosher Luncheon,” New York Times, May 2, 1965, 78.

63. Arthur Aryeh Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington,1999), 192. See also Steven T. Rosenthal, “The Making of the American JewishConsensus,” in Irreconcilable Differences?: The Waning of the American Jewish LoveAffair With Israel (Hanover and London, 2001), 22–41; Allon Gal, “Overview: Envision-ing Israel–The American Jewish Tradition,” 13–37, and Naomi W. Cohen, “DualLoyalties: Zionism and Liberalism,” 319–34, in Envisioning Israel: The Changing Idealsand Images of North American Jews, Allon Gal, ed. (Detroit, 1996); and Jack Wertheimer,“Expansion and Respectability at Midcentury,” in A People Divided: Judaism in Contem-porary America (New York, 1993), 3–17.


defense agencies to activist institutions, whose broad commitments tocivic equity were made manifest by vigilant lobbying, litigating, andprotesting for civil and religious rights. The organizations that hadmobilized American Jewry to support Israeli statehood spurred thecommunity to champion liberalism as the quintessential American value.

The rhetoric and behavior of American Jews, institutionally andindividually, toward the American-Israel Pavilion and the mural contro-versy at the Fair attest to substantial ideological continuity with theprevious “Golden Decade.” Certainly the American Jewish Congress’srole in the controversy illuminates the new activist spirit of AmericanJewish organizations in the postwar period. Its activities reveal acontinuing commitment to the organization’s dream of a liberal Americaand a progressive Israel, fighting side by side to rout injustice and shinethe light of democracy on the world at large. To this end, the AJC refusedto concede the moral high ground to the Jordan Pavilion and itssupporters, asserting the constitutionality of free speech even as it soughtto silence pro-Arab agitation at the Fair. Likewise, the response ofAmerican Jewish citizens to the controversy underscores the politicaldevelopment of the American Jewish community in the immediatepostwar years. The letter campaign in particular reveals a continuingtrend, in which “America’s role in the defeat of Nazism and itsemergence as leader of the free world. . . induced American Jews not onlyto participate in the civic and political life of postwar America, but to doso with unprecedented vigor and effectiveness.”64

As with the Jewish Palestine Pavilion in 1939, a pavilion related toIsrael at the 1964 World’s Fair was created to galvanize and broadcastAmerican Jewish solidarity with the now-existing Jewish state. TheAmerican-Israel Pavilion served as a uniquely American Jewish distilla-tion of Zionism and Israel, in which respect for religious heritage andDiaspora history commingled with support for Israel’s security andsuccess. “America” and “Israel” were meant to be joined in harmoniouspartnership, as the pavilion’s name and exhibitions implied. As bothorganizers of and visitors to the American-Israel Pavilion, and asoutspoken protesters against the Jordan Pavilion mural, American Jewsreaffirmed the consensus forged in the previous decade, the New YorkWorld’s Fair acting as a public arena for acting out a confident andincreasingly assertive postwar American Jewish identity. And just as theyear-long tercentenary commemorative events of 1954 had presentedAmerican Jews with an opportunity to appraise the contributions of the

64. Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews, 190.


Jewish people in America to the United States,65 the American-IsraelPavilion offered an expanded, international venue for popularizing thepostwar American Jewish accord regarding Israel.

From another angle, however, this moment illuminates fissures in thebedrock of the American Jewish liberal consensus. The Flushing Mead-ows fairgrounds became the site for American Jewish critics of theJordan Pavilion of an unintended tug-of-war between pro-Israel solidar-ity and the fight for broad civil liberties, notably free speech. For Jews,blacks, Arab Americans, and anti-war agitators, the Fair itself, as a focusfor the new sixties style of confrontational protest,66 was ultimately astage for exploring an inchoate understanding of America as a nationprofoundly divided against itself.67 Historians usually offer the year1967, the year of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, and a time ofincreasingly explosive racial and urban strife in America, as the dawn ofa new Jewish politics, in which Jewish organizations and their constitu-ents began to turn inward and to reconsider the platforms and alliancesof the broad liberal agenda. As historian Stuart Svonkin has written,however,

The communal priorities of American Jewry began to shift from liberaluniversalism to ethnoreligious self-assertion even before the Six-Day War andthe social and political upheavals of the late 1960s. . . . By the early 1960sJewish intergroup relations professionals were already asking themselveswhether they had emphasized the “good citizen approach” at the expense ofwhat was “good for the Jews.”68

Indeed, a foundry for this changed Jewish sensibility could be foundthree years earlier than the Six-Day War, on the streets of the New YorkWorld’s Fair, in the city’s courts, and in the press.

65. For more on the tercentenary celebrations and contemporary critiques of them, seeGoren, “The ‘Golden Decade’: 1945–1955,” in The Politics and Public Culture ofAmerican Jews, 186, 195–203.

66. Morris Dickstein, “From The Thirties to the Sixties: The New York World’s Fair InIts Own Time,” in Remembering the Future: The New York World’s Fair From 1939 to1964 (New York, 1989), 34.

67. Rick Perlstein, Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of theAmerican Consensus (New York, 2001), 327. Perlstein argues that the Fair was a kind ofwillful disavowal of the increasing divisiveness of the American polity in the early sixties.While Robert Moses and his team certainly intended just that, the Fair as it actuallyunfolded, as we have seen, is further evidence of Perlstein’s thesis: that while Americarecalls the sixties as a “decade of the left,” it should be appraised instead “as a decadewhen the polarization [of American culture] began” (xv).

68. Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice, 180. See also Goren, “Inventing the NewPluralism,” in The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews, 205–23.


The Fair did not simply reflect a changed political and culturalclimate; it helped change it. Propoganda mattered, as all parties involvedin the drama understood. American Jewish organizers envisioned theAmerican-Israel Pavilion as a straightforward means of solidifyingAmerican empathy with and support for Israel, but found themselvesbattling Jordanian efforts to win public sympathy for Arab refugees, whowere just beginning to call themselves Palestinians. The Jordan Pavilion,through its mural, prevailed in presenting a version of recent history thenprofoundly at odds with that of the American Jewish and Gentile public,for whom Israelis were still intrepid pioneers and defenders of democ-racy. Participants on each side of the drama faced off in confrontationalprotests, angry letters, warring poems, strident legal pas de deux, and acacophony of partisan opinion in the media. The Flushing Meadowsfairgrounds was thus the site for clashing performances of identity andhistory for Jews, Arabs, and their respective supporters in a struggle fornarrative supremacy that only intensified in the years that followed.Revisiting a contested corner of the Avenues of Africa and Asia, we maybegin to see the 1964 World’s Fair not as a quaintly utopian “end of anera,” as its critics have maintained,69 but as the beginning of a new one,one that looks decidedly like our own.

69. Dickstein, “From The Thirties to the Sixties,” 26.

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