Norton Mezvinsky is from a well-known Iowa family long involved in Jewish politics. His father, Abe, was for decades a grocer and leading businessman in Ames, Iowa, and was famous for his philanthropy. Norton studied history at Wisconsin University under George Mosse, Howard K. Beale, and William Appleman Williams. At the same time, he corresponded with rabbi Elmer Berger, with whom he was to work and come very close to. He completed his Ph.D at the University of Wisconsin in 1960, while working on a sociological study on American Jewish Self-Segregation which the American Council for Judaism had commissioned. Mezvinsky also did post-doctoral studies at Harvard University. Norton's brother, Edward Mezvinsky, was an Iowa state representative, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and the U.S. Representative to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in the 1970s. Edward was prosecuted for fraud, and spent time in prison many years later. Norton's nephew, Marc Mezvinsky, is married to Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. Mezvinsky was married to the playwright and novelist, Shirley Lauro, and has one daughter with her. There was apparently a second marriage because two issues of the Directory of Scholars in the Humanities, which, for those years, was available as a print edition only, list him as married well after the divorce to Lauro.
Publications
Norton Mezvinsky specializes in U.S. history between 1877 and 1920, U.S. immigration history, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the history of Judaism, and terrorism in the post-modern world. The book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, which he wrote with the Israeli scholar and author Israel Shahak, has been translated and published in four languages, in addition to English. His most recent publications are a lengthy biographical essay of David Ben-Gurion in the new, highly praised Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, published by Lynne Reiner Publishers, and a chapter essay, titled "The Christian Zionist View of Islam", in the new book, Islam in the Eyes of the West, published by Routledge. Two additional essays on the Jewish religious Right and Zionism are scheduled for publication in 2011. Professor Mezvinsky is currently writing a book on Christian Zionism. Professor Mezvinsky has lectured and delivered papers at conferences around the world.
Reception
Nathan Guttman, writing in The Forward, described Mezvinsky as "an academic known for his anti-Israel views...who has been labeled as anti-Zionist holds strong views questioning the right of Jews to a homeland in Israel".
Books
Disagreement in Definition: Three Views of the American Jewish Community in the Twentieth Century, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1956.
: Documents from Israel, 1967-73: Readings for a Critique of Zionism, Ithaca Press, 1975,.
