The report presented to the Israali cabinet also focuses on the demographics of Israel’s capital, concluding that the government should consider new measures to ensure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem.
NEW YORK – The liberal, Reform, Conservative and secular parts of the American Jewish community may become more distant from Israel as the country’s demography becomes more Orthodox and nationalistic, according to a report presented to the Cabinet on Sunday.
Results from the 12th Annual Assessment of the Situation and Dynamics of the Jewish People, put together by The Jewish People Policy Institute, were offered by JPPI Co-Chairman Ambassador Dennis Ross and President Avinoam Bar-Yosef.
Bar-Yosef explained that while there is significant support for Israel in North America, it isn’t compensating for “the young generation of liberal and secular American Jews [which] is increasingly critical of the Jewish state, and concerned that Israeli society is becoming more religious and more right wing.
“Israel and the organized American Jewry should invest heavily in programs of inclusion that engage the ultra-Orthodox in the broader Jewish community and the general US society,” he stressed. “At the same time, follow-up initiatives for Birthright and Masa alumni must be drastically increased.”
The report also focuses on the demographics of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, concluding that the government should consider new measures to ensure a Jewish majority in the holy city.
Among the measures JPPI suggests are creating jobs and more affordable housing opportunities – especially for younger graduates of the city’s academic institutions – in order to reduce native migration from the capital and retain more people in Jerusalem.
“Related to this, the government should take any possible steps to raise and ensure the quality of life for non-Jewish citizens, especially in east Jerusalem,” the report added.
“Non-Jewish Jerusalemites must be better integrated into the city’s social, economic, and cultural fabric.”
The JPPI said it recommends “lowering tensions and strengthening the image of Jerusalem as a safe, developing, pleasant and special place to live.”
In addition, the report also discusses the possibility of expanding municipal boundaries westward by annexing existing Jewish towns, or shrinking the current municipal boundaries and adding more residents to Jerusalem.
“A policy that would strengthen the Jewish majority of Jerusalem while improving the life of the non-Jewish population could receive greater support from the Jewish Diaspora, and could even help strengthen its identification with Israel,” JPPI explained.
The Institute’s study also found problems with the aliya process, specifically from France, where aliya is down 30 percent in 2016 from the previous year.
“The main obstacles dissuading potential immigrants from France relate to employment, education for their children, and housing,” the report states.
“While 40 percent of French Jews still consider making aliya, it is incumbent upon the Israeli government to successfully overcome deficiencies in aliya processing, and to ease the absorption process for new immigrants from France.”
The 2015-2016 executive summary also examined geopolitical factors in Israel, Jewish pluralism in the country, foreign policy recommendations, the Arab-Christian community, as well as anti-Semitism in Europe.
@ bernard ross:
” As with most non-profit organizations, it’s perpetuation is it’s own reward” Dicha of Deborah
false org for Jews does more against islamaphobia than BDS. I think they get grants from gov and muslim orgs because they stopped fighting anti semitism and switched to fighting generic bias. However, they should not be allowed to continue to collect donations from Jews who still beleive they are primarily a jewish org fighting anti semitism…. that ship long saile.
SHmuel HaLevi 2 Said:
Do not include my Father and Uncles.
@ yamit82:
I would like to have us play for the former Jews located in the US, a song by Simon and Garfunkel… “50 ways”…
Lets not forget the betrayal of our people desperately attempting to escape the Nazi clutches. The so called US Jews led by a presumed rav called Steven Wise during WWII made all possible efforts to sabotage those trying to reach the US and elsewhere.
@ yamit82:That was very well written and thought out.
yamit82 Said:
Given the lack of observance in Tel Aviv, its not in Israel either; the future of Judaism is with the Orthodox community unless the future is Messianic Judiasm that draws in Xtians and bolsters numbers as it drifts closer and closer to Reform Judiasm.
According to the American Jewish Identity Survey, out of approximately 5.5 million American adults who are either Jewish by religion or of Jewish parentage and/or upbringing, nearly 1.4 million say they are members of a non-Jewish religion. Due to an ongoing intermarriage rate in excess of 60%, of all children under the age of 12 with Jewish parentage in the United States, less than half have two Jewish parents. Of the more than half with a gentile parent, (according to other surveys) only a quarter thereof will be raised as Jews. Of these, only a small minority will marry other Jews, as it will be almost impossible for an intermarried Jew, however sincere, to convince his or her child to do what he or she failed to do, namely: marry a fellow Jew.
We are not talking here about secularism, not about Jews who opt out of going to synagogue in favor of a baseball game or the movies, but rather in favor of church. Since the vast majority of American Jews are of Ashkenazic descent, this means that 25% of the descendants of European Jews who resisted the blandishments and threats of christianity for some sixty generations, often at the cost of their lives, are now voluntary apostates.
American Jews have been occupied for over 5 decades in a desperate attempt to stay the tide of assimilation and intermarriage (not to even speak of their more hideous confrere: conversion). what is the Jewish leadership trying to perpetuate? Jewish genes? Jewish culture? A fondness for kreplach and klezmer and Isaac Bashevis Singer?
No one is ready to sacrifice one’s life – nor the love of one’s life – for a culture.
If so, no wonder the Catholics are winning. They don’t strive to inculcate in their children a love for Catholic culture. They don’t try to whip up enthusiasm for the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day nor spend millions to make sure that every Catholic child decorates an Easter egg. They are propagating a religion, complete with God and soul and afterlife. We are pushing a culture, complete with Sholem Aleichem and dreidels and lithographs of the Western Wall. But for a culture, no matter how engaging, no one is ready to sacrifice one’s life – nor the love of one’s life. Against christianity we have pitted not Judaism, but Judaica.
History shows that substitutes for halachic Judaism have a shelf life of four generations or less. Reform Judaism’s founder Moses Mendelssohn had nine grandchildren; eight of them were baptized as Christians. Zionist founder Theodore Herzl’s children were not only not Zionists, they were not Jews. How many of the grandchildren of the great Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz married under a chupah? How many of his great-grandchildren know what a chupah is?
To perpetuate Jewish culture, outside of museums and university courses, at the very least you need Jews. But Jews, as all the population surveys prove, are rapidly disappearing. The first step in the multi-million-dollar enterprise of passing Jewish culture on to the next generation is to ensure that there will be a next generation.
When the nation-state of Israel was resurrected in 1948, it was home to a mere 5% of World Jewry. Today, it constitutes the largest Jewish community in the World, and is home to almost 50% of World Jewry. And Israel’s Jewish community is the only one in the World with a positive net birthrate.
Due to ongoing terrorism and the enduring hostility of much of the World, Israel may not seem safe for the individual Jew. Yet, it is the only country in the World that is safe for the collective Jew.
Again, the Message is clear. If the Jewish people are to have a Future, it will only be found in Israel.
@ Eric R.:
Agreed.
This whole issue forgets an obvious point — over time, due to their high birthrate and almost non-existent intermarriage, the Orthodox and Hasidic will become an ever growing percentage of the AMERICAN Jewish population as well.
In other words, the process of “Orthodoxization” of American Judaism will occur here too, it is just lagging behind Israel (or for that matter, the UK).
New York Magazine (practically a bible for the liberal New York Jewish set) pointed out that in 2010, 60% of Jewish children born in NYC were Orthodox or Hasidic, and this percentage is growing every year (think of the political implications of this demographic change as well).
Therefore, this religious “gap” between American and Israeli Jews will last perhaps 15-20 years. Then American Jews will be religious like their Israeli counterparts.
@ David Chase:
Well put!
So the liberal and secular Jews in America are concerned that Israel may become too religious?? What makes them even Jewish enough to even chime in on the topic? Have they ever even been to Israel? Do they know ANYTHING about Shabbos? Do they care if their children grow up Jewish? Do THEY intermarry? What Jewishness or religious training do they possess that gives them the right to pass judgment on the religiousity of Israeli society. Do they plan on being buried in a Jewish cemetery? Or maybe they want to posken sh’ailahs for us while they’re at it. When they start vacationing in Israel rather than Paris and stop heeding the words of Rabbi Obama then maybe we will listen to what they have to say.
more and more and more and more distant…
I do not like Dennis Ross having any influence on the future of Israel. The priority must be on supporting Israel as a JEWISH state and not making hostile Arabs more comfortable inside Jerusalem. Israel’s resources must make it easier for Jews to migrate to Israel and if Israeli Arabs are unhappy they can always move to any of the 50+ Muslim countries or come to the U.S.