The Exodus of the mind

When we interviewed rabbi Shaul Magid a few weeks ago about Jewish identity, he mentioned that Exodus — a novel published in 1958 and turned into a big Hollywood movie starting Paul Newman just a few years later — was a massive influence on American Jews. It helped romanticize Israel and basically turned a lot of Jews into hardcore zionists overnight. It was the same in the Soviet Union. Copies of the book were smuggled in by Israel, translated into Russian, and copied by hand on typewriters by people involved in the zionist movement there — and it was a sensation there, too, also turning Jews into zionists overnight. Jews devoured it in one sitting and then handed it off to their fiends.