www.commentary.org Open in urlscan Pro
104.22.64.173  Public Scan

Form analysis
3 forms found in the DOM

POST https://www.commentary.org/login/

<form action="https://www.commentary.org/login/" method="POST" id="loginForm">
  <div class="login-form-row">
    <label for="log">Email address</label>
    <input type="email" name="log" id="log" class="form-controll" placeholder="Email" required="">
  </div>
  <div class="login-form-row">
    <label for="pwd">Password</label>
    <input type="password" name="pwd" id="pwd" class="form-controll" placeholder="Password" required="">
  </div>
  <div class="login-form-row login-form-row-remember">
    <input name="rememberme" class="remember-checkbox" id="rememberme" type="checkbox" checked="checked" value="forever">
    <label for="rememberme" class="vw-login-form-remember"><span>Remember me</span></label>
  </div>
  <input type="hidden" name="redirect_to" value="'https://www.commentary.org/articles/jack-wertheimer/the-truth-about-american-jews-and-israel/">
  <div class="login-form-row login-form-row-action">
    <button name="wp-submit" id="wp-submit" class="cm-button cm-button-primary">
      <span>Login</span>
    </button>
  </div>
  <div class="login-form-row login-form-row-action">
    <a id="lost-pass" href="javascript:;" class="lost-href">Forgot your password?</a>
  </div>
</form>

POST

<form id="resetPassForm" method="post" class="woocommerce-ResetPassword lost_reset_password hidden">
  <p>Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.</p>
  <div class="login-form-row">
    <label for="user_login">Email</label>
    <input class="woocommerce-Input woocommerce-Input--text input-text" placeholder="Email" type="text" name="user_login" id="user_login" autocomplete="off" required="" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
  </div>
  <input type="hidden" id="_wpnonce" name="_wpnonce" value="c31d47eb77"><input type="hidden" name="_wp_http_referer" value="/articles/jack-wertheimer/the-truth-about-american-jews-and-israel/">
  <div class="login-form-row login-form-row-action">
    <input type="hidden" name="wc_reset_password" value="true">
    <button name="wp-submit" class="cm-button cm-button-primary"><span>Reset password</span></button>
  </div>
  <div class="login-form-row login-form-row-action">
    <a href="javascript:;" id="go-back" class="lost-href">Go back</a>
  </div>
</form>

GET https://www.commentary.org/

<form role="search" method="get" class="search-form" action="https://www.commentary.org/">
  <div class="search-form-input-wrap">
    <svg class="search-form-icon" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="42" height="42" viewBox="0 0 24 24">
      <title>search-alt</title>
      <g fill="none">
        <g clip-path="url(#clip0)">
          <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd"
            d="M15.402 16.336c-4.052 0-7.392-3.402-7.392-7.667C8.01 4.403 11.35 1 15.402 1c4.051 0 7.39 3.402 7.39 7.668 0 4.265-3.339 7.667-7.39 7.667zm-6.436-2.103a8.806 8.806 0 0 1-1.957-5.564C7.01 3.88 10.767 0 15.402 0c4.634 0 8.392 3.881 8.392 8.669 0 4.787-3.758 8.668-8.392 8.668-2.23 0-4.257-.898-5.76-2.364L.902 24l-.696-.72 8.76-9.048z"
            fill="#777777"></path>
        </g>
        <defs>
          <clipPath id="clip0">
            <path fill="#777777" d="M0 0h24v24H0z"></path>
          </clipPath>
        </defs>
      </g>
    </svg>
    <div class="search-form-input">
      <input type="search" value="" name="s" class="search-input" placeholder="Enter Keyword" required="">
      <p class="search-form-input-desc">Type and press enter</p>
    </div>
  </div>
</form>

Text Content

Close

LOGIN

Access your Commentary account.

Email address
Password
Remember me
Login
Forgot your password?


Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link to
create a new password via email.

Email
Reset password
Go back
 * Home
 * Contact
 * Archive
   * January 2024
 * Donate
 * Merch
 * Register
 * Subscribe

Search
Login
 * Home
 * Contact
 * Archive
   * January 2024
 * Donate
 * Merch
 * Register
 * Subscribe

Search
Login


The monthly magazine of opinion.

June 2009 Israel



THE TRUTH ABOUT AMERICAN JEWS AND ISRAEL

Israel is integrated into Diaspora life as never before, but for some Jews the
distance is growing.
by Jack Wertheimer

Reporting on the state of American Jewish relations with Israel, Time ran a
headline announcing “The Diaspora’s Discontent.” For its part, Newsweek saw fit
to inform us that American Jews who “loved Israel blindly” were now “learning to
ask hard questions.” The New York Review of Books offered an analysis entitled
“The Illusion of Jewish Unity” that limned the growing distance between the
established American Jewish organizations and “the reality of Jewish opinion in
America” about Israeli policies. These articles were published not in the wake
of the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza but two decades ago.

Now, as then, the narrative of American Jewish disaffection continues to
dominate public discussions about the relationship between the largest Diaspora
Jewish community and the Jewish state. It has become the journalistic cliché of
our time to portray American Jews as shifting, in response to this or that
event, from uncritical adoration of Israel to profound disenchantment. For the
past three decades, this trope has recurred with increasing frequency,
particularly when the nationalist Likud party has attained power and whenever
Israel has engaged in military action.

It is certainly true that American Jews do not hold monolithic views about
Israeli options and policies, any more than there is uniformity of opinion
within Israel itself. But the intra-Jewish rift that has been heralded for
decades has not occurred. In fact, the great untold story is that in some
respects, the connection between American Jews and Israel has never been more
intimate. To the extent that divisions over Israel are growing, they stem less
from disagreements over Israel’s policies on war and peace than they do from a
far-reaching transformation that is remaking American Jewish society.

_____________

To appreciate just how much things have changed, we need only return to the
early years of statehood, when Jewish leaders in both countries struggled to
define the rules of engagement. American Zionist leaders found themselves
without a cause once their stated objective—the creation of a Jewish state—had
been attained. “What shall I do with my Zionism?” asked the young Arthur
Hertzberg in these pages. “The Diaspora has chosen to live on as such. How to
make it live on creatively and how to maintain inner identity between it and
Israel—these are the most important questions that face us today.”

Meanwhile on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, Israeli leaders were far
less interested in the future vitality of Diaspora communities than in fostering
a mass immigration (or “aliyah”) of well-educated and skilled Western Jews who
could join in the historic task of building an autonomous Jewish state after
nearly 1,900 years of exile and political dependence. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s
first prime minister, bluntly told visiting American Jews that if they
personally could not manage to immigrate, at the very least they should send
their children. Calls for a mass immigration angered leaders of large Jewish
organizations, particularly those without a strong Zionist orientation, and more
generally alarmed American Jews who feared being tarred with charges of dual
loyalty.

Matters grew so tense that Jacob Blaustein, in his capacity as president of the
American Jewish Committee, insisted on a formal understanding with Ben-Gurion as
to the mutual responsibilities of each community. Just two years after Israel’s
founding, the two men exchanged a series of statements clarifying the
relationship. The primary role of American Jews, they agreed, was “to do their
share in the rebuilding of Israel, which faces . . . enormous political, social,
and economic problems.” They would do so through philanthropic and political
support for the fledgling state, but there would be no more calls for mass
immigration. As to the question of loyalty, Ben-Gurion acknowledged the
allegiance of American Jews to the United States and pledged not to “interfere
in any way with the internal affairs of Jewish communities abroad.”



That the political leader of a sovereign nation would have issued a statement of
this kind directed at citizens of another country, the preponderant majority of
whom had never set foot in his land, is but one of the remarkable features of
this exchange. For Blaustein had insisted on the issuance of something akin to a
formal understanding between the Israeli government and a population that had no
political or legal connection to the Jewish state. It is hard to conjure other
instances of a head of state issuing such a document to citizens of a foreign
country.

The statement thereby foreshadowed the extraordinary ties that would bind
American Jews and Israel for many decades to come. Since Israel’s creation,
American Jews have directed huge amounts of dollars to educational, cultural,
religious, social, and health institutions in the Jewish state (funds, we may
add, that have aided all of Israel’s citizens, regardless of their religion).
They have also invested a great deal of political capital to win friends for
Israel within their nation’s corridors of power.

Ben-Gurion’s non-interference pledge was, in the final analysis, naïve, because
he did not envision a time when American Jews would routinely and without a
moment’s discomfort interfere in Israeli internal affairs. Such interference is
now routine, as is evident from the financial contributions flowing from the
United States to a variety of Israeli political parties and NGOs of all
ideological hues, thus ensuring that American Jewish philanthropy would have a
significant impact on Israeli public policy. Perhaps even more striking, the
agreement did not envision a time when American Jewry would cease to act solely
as patron to an impoverished Israel but rather would turn to the Jewish state
for help in solving some of its deepest problems. The agreement did not heed a
fundamental premise of spiritual Zionism: the conviction that the Diaspora would
be transformed by Zionism and the Jewish state that was born from it.




_____________

Indeed, over the 61 years since its founding, Israel has come to play a
pervasive, if unacknowledged, role in virtually every sector of American Jewish
public culture. Take the religious sphere: With the noteworthy exception of many
Orthodox synagogues, congregations recite all Hebrew prayers using the Sephardic
pronunciation adopted by Israeli Hebrew, even though American Jews
overwhelmingly are of Ashkenazic ancestry. Jewish congregations of almost all
varieties routinely recall Israel in their liturgy and holiday calendar by
reciting a prayer for the state on Sabbath and holiday morning services at the
pivotal moment before the return of the Torah(s) to the ark and by marking
Israel Independence Day and Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day, marking the city’s
reunification). More subtly, passages of the liturgy are sung to Israeli
melodies, as when references to the restoration of the Jewish people to Zion are
chanted to the tune of the “Hatikva,” Israel’s national anthem, or the iconic
song of the Six Day War, “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (Jerusalem of Gold). As for
public discourse, rabbis across the spectrum routinely deliver sermons about
conditions in Israel designed to inspire their flock to identify with Israel and
to mobilize them at times of crisis.

References to Israel also come in more material form: men and women wear knitted
kippot (skullcaps) and talitot (prayer shawls) imported from Israel; numerous
synagogues have faced a portion of their sanctuary or other precincts in
Jerusalem stone, the distinctive building block of Israel’s capital; and the
flag of Israel is displayed prominently along with the Stars and Stripes in
sanctuaries and social halls of synagogues. Israeli products, particularly
religious items, are ubiquitous in synagogue gift shops; through those items,
synagogues have served as cultural mediators, bringing a part of Israel into
American Jewish homes.

The ubiquity of Israel is also apparent in educational institutions, which have
gradually included more information about Israel in their curricula. A survey
conducted in the 1980s found that a staggering 98 percent of responding
congregational schools said they taught about Israel. The more intensive and
immersive settings of Jewish education offer even greater exposure to Israel.
Even the casual observer visiting any of the hundreds of Zionist-inclined day
schools will notice walls festooned with reminders of Israel—maps, photographic
collages, Hebrew signage—even as time is set aside for learning Israeli songs
and dance, and attention is paid to modern Hebrew and Israeli culture.

Summer camps with a strong Jewish orientation reinforce the connection to Israel
by sprinkling Hebrew and references to Israel into camp conversation, and
teaching campers Israeli dances and folk music. Housed in rustic settings and
evoking an ambience of communal living, “camp settings actually come closest to
suggesting our idealization of Israeli life,” observes ethnographer Riv-Ellen
Prell. All of this has been reinforced by trips to Israel sponsored by youth
movements, the religious denominations, schools, and synagogues, which have
given young people first-hand exposure to Israeli life.

The connection is not confined to youth; it suffuses much of American Jewish
culture. Jewish music offers a case in point. The repertoire of popular Jewish
music is heavily Israeli, as is evident from songbooks, choral performances,
festivals, and recordings with Jewish themes. In fact, it is often difficult to
identify a clear demarcation between American Jewish and Israeli music.
Symptomatically, when some representation of Jewish music is needed at baseball
stadiums whose sound systems broadcast various types of ethnic music, the snappy
“Jewish” tune tends to be “Hava Nagila” or “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena,” both imported
from Israel.

If anything, the influence of Israeli dance has been even greater. What, after
all, is Jewish dance if not either neo-Hasidic steps or imported Israeli folk
choreography? Writing about “Hora Hootenannies and Yemenite Hoedowns,” the
historian Emily Katz has traced how American Jews eagerly seized upon Israeli
dance as their own distinctive ethnic style in the 1950s when a rage for folk
dance gripped American society. Since then, American Jews have danced the Hora
and other Israeli steps at family celebrations, in synagogues, at communal
events, and at staged performances.

Israeli imports figure in other areas of cultural expression too. In the
culinary sphere, falafel, hummus, and tehina are ubiquitous in kosher pizza
parlors; of late, Israeli-style grills vie with other kosher eateries. When
Jewish communities sponsor Jewish film festivals, most of their offerings are
from Israel. Translations of Israeli books don’t seem to sell as well in the
U.S. as in some European countries, but there are pockets of interest in leading
Israeli writers. And with the explosion of offerings on the Internet, American
Jews now connect to Israeli cultural programs and up-to-the-moment news with a
click. Though we have no precise measures, there is evidence that a portion of
the American Jewish population, most notably among leaders of Jewish
institutions, regularly visit Israel online. The full dimensions of this
connection, if not dependence, are only gradually becoming known, but the
general direction of cultural influence is quite clear.

_____________



None of this is to suggest that American Jews necessarily have a deep
understanding of Israel. Quite the contrary: though Israel’s influence on
American Jewish life is pervasive, knowledge about how the country really works
remains for the most part shallow.

There is a severe language gap, to begin with. True, pockets of Hebrew literacy
may be found in some day schools, a few extraordinary supplementary schools, a
sprinkling of early-childhood programs that immerse toddlers in a
Hebrew-speaking environment, and college-level language programs, but much of
the American Jewish population has little familiarity with modern Israeli
Hebrew. Among those who identify themselves as Jewish by virtue of their
adherence to Judaism, the most engaged sector of the American Jewish population,
only a bit more than one-third claim they understand a Hebrew sentence. As to
understanding the nature of Israeli society, a survey conducted by sociologists
Steven M. Cohen and Ephraim Ya’ar early this year found that a sample of
American Jews graded their own knowledge of Israeli personalities and key
features of Israeli society low, a finding confirmed by their incorrect
responses to factual questions. Perhaps most surprising are the comparatively
low percentages of American Jews who actually have traveled to Israel: whereas
two-thirds of adult Canadian Jews and nearly three-quarters of French and
Australian Jews have been to Israel, only 35 percent of American Jews have
visited even once.

These dismal facts have placed a great burden on educators who regard Israel as
a central feature of modern Jewish identity. Even in the post-Six Day War
euphoria, when Israel education grew exponentially in Jewish schools, educators
struggled to find points of commonality between the American Jewish and Israeli
experiences. The result, more often than not, was a facile portrayal of Israel
as a facsimile of America. Israel’s ingathering of Jews from across the globe
was presented as analogous to America’s hospitality to the downtrodden; the
immigrants of the early-20th-century Second Aliyah were preposterously compared
in one popular textbook to the “hippies who make their appearance more than half
a century later in the industrial societies of the West”; and the idealists who
drained the swamps were said to have shared the ethos of America’s pioneers.
Reading such accounts, students understandably might have imagined David
Ben-Gurion sporting a coonskin cap. The result of such distortions has been a
persistent knowledge deficit that impeded American Jews from understanding
Israel on its own terms, as a separate and very different Jewish society.

If anything, the intractable conflict with the Palestinians and the ensuing bad
press Israel has received since the first intifada of the late 1980s further
complicated efforts to educate American Jews about Israel. With the passing of
the heroic age of Israeli military exploits, it has become far more difficult to
draw young people into engagement with the Jewish state. Teachers confess
bewilderment as to the proper focus of Israel education: Is it to prepare young
Jews to respond to hostile criticism of Israel and advocate in its behalf? Is it
to foster future contributors to fundraising campaigns? Is it to engage young
Jews in the life of the Jewish people, with Israel serving as a, if not the,
crucial focal point? Or is it to raise a generation of literate Jews for whom
Hebrew is the language of Jewish religious service and culture, and connection
to Israel is an essential dimension of Jewish living?

Recognizing the limitations of previous educational efforts, American Jewish
leaders have launched a series of programs to encourage more young Jews to spend
time in Israel. The Orthodox sector has been the most ambitious and successful
in this regard. Soon after the Six Day War, it became increasingly common for
Orthodox high school graduates to spend a so-called “gap year” at an Israeli
yeshiva or seminary program before beginning college. The prestige associated
with this experience is evident from ads Jewish high schools take out each June,
proudly enumerating the Israeli religious schools their alumni will frequent in
the coming year. Still, there is a more complex side to this story. Most
gap-year programs isolate visiting Americans in separate yeshiva programs that
create a bubble, where English is the language of instruction and Israeli
society is kept at bay. They seem designed primarily to immerse young Orthodox
Jews in intensive religious study in order to fortify them before they go off to
their university studies. The gap year, in short, is treated as an inoculation
against assimilation in the United States, not necessarily as an opportunity to
engage with Israeli society.

The same can be said of the best-known Israel experience, Birthright Israel,
which to date has sent nearly 175,000 young American Jews between the ages of
eighteen and twenty-six on free ten-day trips paid for by Jewish philanthropists
and the Israeli government. Observers of Birthright tours have characterized
participants as “pilgrim tourists,” who are exposed to a Disneyland version of
Israel and are largely shielded from the jagged edges of Israeli society. As the
program’s organizers candidly admit, Birthright aspires to create “links to
Israel,” but its primary goal is to “launch young, unaffiliated Jews on a
‘Jewish journey’ that would lead them to a lifelong involvement with Jewish
life.” The trip to Israel is principally an identity-building experience
intended to deepen Jewish commitment.

Birthright is therefore designed to address a fundamental flaw in American
Jewish society. Since the majority of Jewish families do not take the trouble to
enroll their children in enriched programs of Jewish education, including family
and educational trips to Israel, at a level comparable to Jews in other
communities around the world, Israel itself has become the last desperate hope
to undo what ails American Jewry. In a few days’ time, the state must, in the
words of Birthright’s organizers, “reach a sector of young American Jewry
(popularly known as the ‘unaffiliated’) that has become detached or alienated
from Jewish life.”

Once the poor relative, Israel now is called upon to rescue a struggling
American Jewish community in its difficult efforts to retain the allegiance of
its young.

_____________



To be sure, American Jews also reciprocate the favor by focusing much of their
organizational activity on support for Israel. Where once there were clear lines
dividing Zionist and non-Zionist organizations, it is hard to think of any large
national American Jewish organization that does not include Israel in its
portfolio, a point highlighted by the membership of no less than 55 “major
Jewish organizations” in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations, the umbrella body for agencies heavily invested in issues having
to do with Israel and Jewish communities abroad. To these must be added a few
thousand synagogues and even more schools that work to strengthen the ties of
American Jews to Israel. There is also a significant apparatus of “friends of”
agencies engaged in fund-raising for all kinds of institutions in Israel, as
well as umbrella funds and foundations that provide much of the budgets of some
18,000 NGOs in Israel. Beyond their financial contributions, American Jews have
developed organizational mechanisms to advocate and lobby in support of Israel,
reaching out to sectors of American society and reaching in to the Jewish
community to educate about Israeli conditions.

There is no question that altruism and a sense of solidarity with Israelis
motivate a great many of these efforts. A large swath of engaged Jews care about
the fate of Israel and want to lend a hand in the greatest collective project of
the Jewish people in modern times. No doubt, American Jews also feel some
residual guilt for not having done enough during the Holocaust to aid
coreligionists at their time of most desperate need.

For their part, Jewish organizations across the spectrum continue to expend
resources helping Israel because they know their constituents expect them to
channel American Jewish know-how and dollars to the Jewish state. But they have
also come to recognize how vital Israel is to their own institutional health.
Dedication to Israel absorbs a great deal of their time, even as it has enhanced
their credibility with their members. Moreover, their connection to Israel has
catapulted them onto the international stage.

American Jewish leaders not only work cooperatively with Israeli government
officials, they also travel the globe to meet with heads of state, foreign
ministers, and leaders of industry and finance, fulfilling their self-defined
roles as advocates for Israel. It is hard to think of any other American ethnic
group whose organizations command so much attention from the most powerful world
leaders, attention they attract because of their involvement with Israel.
“Contrary to the often-asserted anti-Zionist charge that Israel owes its
strength to American Jewish power,” argues the historian and diplomat Michael B.
Oren, perhaps too broadly,  “in fact, American Jewish power was forged by
Israel.”

Even more important, Israel has also given Jewish organizations a specifically
Jewish purpose. As ever more of their attention is riveted on public-policy
questions of little direct consequence to Jewish life in this country, on
activities in support of non-sectarian causes, on the battle against
anti-Semitism or on welfare-related activities, Jewish organizations are drawn
back to specifically Jewish functions by their work for Israel. Dollars
channeled to Israel also build the social capital of Jewish organizations by
engaging their members in the positive task of building Jewish life and by
mobilizing leaders in behalf of distinctly Jewish functions. That American
Jewish organizations have done much good for Israel is by now well known; the
unacknowledged reality is how much Israel has provided them with a positive
Jewish mission and an opportunity to exercise leadership.

_____________

Taken as a whole, then, American Jews maintain a multi-layered and remarkably
reciprocal relationship with Israel that could not have been imagined by
Ben-Gurion and Blaustein or their contemporaries at the time of Israel’s
founding. The complication in this story of mutual influence and support is that
not all sectors of American Jewish society participate equally. It is well and
good to acknowledge the pervasive influence of Israel on American Jewish culture
and the many ways American Jews connect to Israel through their organizations.
But what about all the Jews who stand aloof from those institutions and have
little involvement with organized Jewish life?

The lamentable reality is that attachment to Israel is part of a web of Jewish
association rapidly unraveling in our time. In a trenchant analysis, the
sociologist Steven M. Cohen has recently drawn attention to the “inconvenient
truth” of current American Jewish life: “Underlying the population-wide
averages,” he wrote, “is a decided movement in two opposing directions by the
more and less engaged portions of American Jewry.” American Jews are rapidly
polarizing into two camps—one with considerable, if not increasing, levels of
Jewish attachment, and one with eroding connections.

The latter is far larger in size than the former. And when it comes to
connection to Israel, this split is growing apace.



What accounts for the army of American Jews who are divorcing themselves from
engagement with Israel? One factor is a marked decline in the population of Jews
who identify with the Jewish religion. A set of studies co-authored by Barry
Kosmin and Ariela Keysar has traced a steady slippage in the number of Jews who
claim to be religiously Jewish, with a concomitant rise in those claiming to be
either “culturally Jewish” or “just Jewish.” This is significant because Jewish
religious activity directly correlates to strong attachment to Israel. Orthodox
Jews who evince the highest levels of synagogue participation and ritual
observance also are the most apt of all American Jews to claim a strong
attachment to Israel and to visit frequently. (They also make Aliyah at far
higher rates than other American Jews.) More generally, members of synagogues
across the spectrum of Jewish denominations also report having vibrant ties to
Israel.

 Conversely, Jews who claim not to participate in religious activities tend to
have weak involvement with Israel. The same pattern can be observed when we
consider the population of Jews affiliated with other institutions of the
American Jewish community. Eighty-five percent of highly affiliated Jews
maintain strong connections to Israel, as compared with fewer than half of the
unaffiliated. As larger percentages of American Jews eschew religious and
organizational participation, we can expect a further decline in attachment to
Israel.

Educational experiences also correlate strongly with levels of connection to
Israel. Those American Jews who as youths enjoyed the most intensive
opportunities for formal and also informal Jewish education—participation in
Jewish summer camps, youth movement activities, teen trips to Israel—evince the
highest levels of connection to Israel as adults. Conversely, those who have a
meager Jewish education claim the lowest levels of attachment.

A new cycle of involvement develops when young Jews return from study in Israel
and involve themselves actively in Jewish activities upon their return. A study
of religious prayer groupings (minyanim) established by and for Americans in
their twenties and thirties found that in the most participatory services, an
astounding 96 percent had been to Israel at least once, and high percentages had
enrolled in half-year or longer programs. Through their exposure to the Hebrew
language and Jewish textual study in Israel, young Jews have gained the facility
to participate actively and also to lead their own religious services.
Presumably, those who have not benefited from such learning opportunities find
it far more difficult to join in. A chasm is opening between young Jews who have
spent considerable time in Israel and those who have not.

The most important trend shaping the connection of American Jews to Israel, the
one that outweighs all other factors, is intermarriage. Jews who marry other
Jews are far more likely than those who intermarry to maintain a personal
connection to Israel, and that is true for their children too. Nearly 60 percent
of in-married Jews with children have been to Israel, as compared with just 15
percent of Jews who intermarried. And when it comes to feelings of connection,
46 percent of the intermarried have a low level of attachment to Israel,
compared with 21 percent of the in-married. As for their children, only small
percentages of Jews raised in intermarried families travel to Israel.

In Boston, where the Jewish community prides itself on its strong outreach
programs to intermarried families, children with two Jewish parents are 20 times
more likely to have been to Israel than those raised in intermarried families.
Community planners who worry about these trends speak of a race between
Birthright Israel and intermarriage for the allegiance of children raised in
intermarried families. Yet, even though it welcomes anyone who identifies as
Jewish, Birthright Israel continues to attract a population in which young
people raised by mixed-married parents are heavily under-represented. If it is a
race to win allegiance, only a small minority of youths raised in intermarried
families seem interested in the offer of a free trip to the Jewish state.

_____________

The deepening chasm between the Jewish “haves”—those who are attached to
Judaism, received a strong Jewish education, and were encouraged by their
parents to identify unambiguously with Judaism—and the more alienated
“have-nots” will profoundly shape all aspects of American Jewish life in the
decades to come. To be sure, these categories are not hard and fast. A minority
of the have-nots through serendipity or coaxing may find their way to greater
involvement; and some who have been given rich Jewish nurturance will opt out.
But in the aggregate, two populations of Jews are forming, with vastly different
outlooks and experiences.

As we contemplate these two trajectories, a worrisome scenario looms. With a
large sector of American Jewry already evincing tenuous connections to Israel,
domestic political allegiances may come to trump solidarity with Israel.
Mounting evidence over the past few years demonstrates that the ideological camp
with which large portions of American Jews identify—the self-proclaimed liberal
wing of the Democratic party— is harboring sizable numbers of Americans with
little sympathy for Israel. The trend has been evident for the past number of
years, but most recently, as the Gaza war was winding down in January of this
year, a Pew Research Center study found that over one-quarter (26 percent) of
liberal Democrats professed more sympathy for the Palestinians than for Israel,
a balance of support found in no other political sector. (By comparison, only 5
percent of Republicans voiced greater sympathy for the Palestinians than for
Israel.)



Up to now, social scientists have remarked on how the political allegiances of
American Jews seem to have little or no effect on their connections to Israel.
How long this will last, though, is anyone’s guess. As social pressures from
their non-Jewish peers mount and if the so-called progressive forces in America
increasingly turn hostile to the Jewish state, as they have done in Europe,
there is sound reason to worry that American Jews with the weakest links to
Israel and poorest Jewish education will, at best, become indifferent to
Israel—or perhaps side against it. Even at present, it is not uncommon to hear
younger Jews speak of how socially inconvenient Israel has become as they
struggle between conformity to the new political correctness and dissent when
their peers denounce Israel for all sorts of alleged crimes.

Little wonder, then, that Israeli leaders have become more vocal in their pleas
for greater investment in programs designed to strengthen American Jewish life.
Ignoring Ben-Gurion’s pledge of non-interference in internal American Jewish
affairs, several recent prime ministers and presidents of Israel have looked for
ways to shore up Jewish education in the United States. Though material on
Israel, in their view, is to be one facet of the curriculum, they have spoken in
far broader terms about the vital need for increased Jewish literacy.

How ironic: although American Jews have long bemoaned Israeli ignorance about
their communities and achievements, it appears that Israeli leaders fully grasp
the danger to the Jewish state should large swaths of the Diaspora population
remain ignorant of its own traditions. Meanwhile, an American Jewish community
that once moved mountains in support of Israel now seems paralyzed in the face
of internal forces that are weakening engagement with the Jewish state and
eroding the vitality of its own culture.





Share via:

 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * More

Jack Wertheimer is a professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish
Theological Seminary.



Letter
+ A A -


TRENDING NOW


IS TRUMP CHAOTIC—OR IS IT AMERICA?


THE PRESS HAS LOST ITS MIND, EXPERTS SAY


REVISIONIST JOURNALISM


WHO WILL GOVERN THE PALESTINIANS?


HOW UNIVERSITIES INSTILL A CONSPIRATORIAL WORLDVIEW


FIGHT THE INSANITY. SUBSCRIBE TO REASON.

Start your risk free trial with unlimited access.


Choose a plan


LISTEN TO THE BEST PODCAST ANYWHERE, EVERYWHERE.

Get it on Soundcloud.


WHAT’S IN THE LATEST ISSUE?

Explore the scintillating January 2024 issue of Commentary.

Subscribe
You may also like


‘THEY FORGOT TO BE AFRAID’

by James B. Meigs


IT’S NOT THE ‘OCCUPATION,’ STUPID

by Sol Stern


THE GENIUS OF ISRAEL, EVEN STILL

by Bret Stephens

Scroll Down For the Next Article


Next

Read the latest issue


INTELLIGENT OPINIONS SINCE 1945. SUBSCRIBE AND SUPPORT OUR EFFORTS.

Subscribe
Donate
a 501(c)(3) non profit organization
 * Newsletter!
 * About
 * Advertise
 * Privacy
 * Terms

Site design by beck & stone

Close
search-alt

Type and press enter

 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * WhatsApp
 * LinkedIn
 * Pinterest
 * SMS
 * Email
 * Print
 * Copy Link
 * More Networks

Share via
Facebook
X (Twitter)
LinkedIn
Mix
Pinterest
Tumblr
Skype
Buffer
Pocket
VKontakte
Parler
Xing
Reddit
Line
Flipboard
MySpace
Delicious
Amazon
Digg
Evernote
Blogger
LiveJournal
Baidu
MeWe
NewsVine
Yummly
Yahoo
WhatsApp
Viber
SMS
Telegram
Facebook Messenger
Like
Email
Print
Copy Link
Copy link
CopyCopied