Elmer Berger (rabbi)
Elmer Berger (1908–1996) was a Jewish Reform rabbi best known for his strong opposition to Zionism.
Berger was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Hungarian-born father and a German-American mother. As a child, his family attended the Euclid Avenue Temple, where Rabbi Louis Wolsey encouraged him to become a rabbi. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Cincinnati and was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1932. He began his ministry in Pontiac, Michigan, and later served in Flint, Michigan, from 1936 to 1942.
He married Seville Schwartz in 1931; they divorced in 1946. In 1946 he married Ruth Winegarden, who died in 1979.
Berger became a leading figure in the American Jewish anti‑Zionist movement. He opposed the Reform movement’s shift away from anti‑Zionism represented by the Columbus Platform of 1937. In 1942 his mentor, Rabbi Louis Wolsey, helped found the American Council for Judaism (ACJ) and named Berger its first executive director, a post he held until 1955. He remained a consultant to the ACJ until 1968, when he was forced to resign.
Berger’s 1945 book, The Jewish Dilemma, argued against Zionism and for Jewish assimilation into broader society. He also praised the Soviet Union as a model for Jewish emancipation, claiming that Soviet Jews had achieved true equality and that Zionism was unnecessary.
After World War II, the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the growing popularity of Zionism among American Jews led to criticism of Berger and the ACJ. Louis Wolsey resigned from the ACJ in 1945, and some ACJ members left in later years amid disagreements over the organization’s direction and stance on the Holocaust and Israel.
In 1955 Berger proposed reforms aimed at weaving Jewish life more closely into American culture, such as moving the Sabbath to Sunday and reinterpreting symbols like the menorah and Sukkot to speak to broader American society.
The Six-Day War of 1967 intensified Berger’s anti‑Zionist views and brought renewed criticism from Zionists. In a controversial 1967 interview, he named several prominent Jewish leaders as supporters of his position, which led to resignations from some of them. In 1968, after further disputes and allegations—some linking him to helping Arab envoys at the United Nations—Berger resigned as ACJ’s director and founded American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism (AJAZ) to continue publishing his ideas.
Berger spent his later years between New York City and Sarasota, Florida, and died in 1996 of lung cancer at age 88. Norton Mezvinsky later published accounts of Berger’s life, and a 2011 biography, Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism, highlighted his controversial role in Jewish history.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:53 (CET).