American Jews and Israel: Can this marriage be saved?

by Victor Rosenthal

A great deal has been written lately about the problematic relationship between American Jews (the non-Orthodox majority) and Israel. Everyone wants to get into the act.

I don’t have any magic bullets. But as an American-Israeli I can’t help thinking about it.

From an Israeli perspective, American Jews don’t meet our expectations as Jews. We shouldn’t be surprised. This is because most non-Orthodox American Jews are politically either liberals, progressives, or extreme leftists. For most of them their Judaism is either a very small part of their lives, or is a version of Judaism that barely exists in Israel, Tikkun-Olam Judaism.

When American members of If Not Now or Jewish Voice for Peace seem to echo the propaganda of Israel’s deadly enemies, Israelis are shocked that Jews could speak that way about the only Jewish state. But note that while anti-Israel Jews may add “as a Jew…” to their attacks, for rhetorical purposes, either they are really speaking “as progressives,” or worse, “as Tikkun-Olam Jews,” secular humanists with some vestigial trappings of Judaism.

There are strong political pressures driving American Jews away from Israel as well. Most Jews are Democrats, and strongly supported Barack Obama. Israel began to become a partisan issue in America when the Obama Administration made it so in the fight over the Iran deal. Obama quite deliberately introduced an element of anti-Israel ideology into the conversation, and his surrogates directly accused Jewish lawmakers that opposed it of dual loyalty or warmongering.

Anti-Israel attitudes in the Democratic Party also received a strong boost in 2018 from the election of several new Muslim and far-left members of Congress who are outspokenly anti-Israel.

Republican President Donald Trump has adopted some high-profile pro-Israel policies, such as moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting funding to UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority, and most importantly, taking the US out of the Iranian nuclear deal. For Democrats today, whatever Trump is for, they must oppose, and that, too, is having an effect.

Liberal American Jews are sticking with the Democratic Party, and moving leftward – and away from Israel – along with it. It’s not just politics. Assimilation and intermarriage is increasing, and Jewish identification is decreasing. There is no special reason to oppose the drift of their party. These changes make it likely that the trend pushing American Jews away from Israel will intensify.

Our expectation as Israelis is that as Jews they should feel some connection to Israel. But the reality is that they are no different in this regard from other American liberals, progressives, or extreme leftists. And why should they be?

Just as we don’t know who they are, they don’t know us. Most of their information comes through American media, much of which – for example, the NY Times and NPR, both favorites of liberal-to-leftist Jews – is biased to the point of complete disconnection from reality. They present an image of a powerful nation almost gleefully exploiting and punishing a weak, victimized minority, while ignoring the broader context of threats against Israel. They often reproduce charges made against Israel by her enemies without verification, and don’t make corrections when their stories are proven false.

American Jews are also targeted with disinformation from their own institutions: the Reform Movement in particular has pushed the Israeli Left’s position that Israel is becoming illiberal and theocratic, and has magnified and even provoked crises over issues like mixed-gender prayer at the Western Wall and non-Orthodox conversion, in order to pressure the Israeli government into fully recognizing and supporting their movement – something impossible in Israel’s political climate. Nevertheless, the campaign has damaged Israel’s image as a free and liberal society (which it mostly is).

Israel is not America. The language, the security situation, the population (containing 12% Haredim and 20% Arabs), the legal system, and the culture – as much Middle Eastern and African as European, and certainly not North American – mean that many aspects of our society will be unfamiliar to them. Americans who expect, for example, that Israel will provide the degree of freedom of expression to citizens that they have in the USA will be disappointed.

It’s very unlikely that American Jews will abandon the Democratic Party. And it’s equally unlikely that they will make the effort to get to know the state that claims to be their homeland, but that they don’t like very much.

There is one thing that could change all of this. The earthquake that could propel the American Jews into our arms would be the mushrooming of anti-Jewish attitudes in the Democratic party and the broader society. Could it happen? Something similar seems to have occurred in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. The expression of antisemitism and outright Jew-hatred promoted by Labour-linked political operatives has become worrisome enough that some British Jews have decided to leave the country. Could this happen in the US? I’ve been away too long to feel confident enough to predict that.

Short of that – and I devoutly hope it will remain short of that – we can expect the disconnect, divide, whatever you want to call it, to get worse, not better.

“Can this marriage be saved?” was a popular column in the “Ladies Home Journal” until the magazine’s demise in 2014. It was based on true stories from a family counseling practice. Both sides presented their stories, a counselor made suggestions, and there was a follow-up. My wife says that usually the marriage could be saved by improved communication, but I remember that sometimes the answer was no, it could not.

So I will play the counselor, and here’s my advice: stop criticizing each other so much. Live with your differences. And stay together for the sake of the children.

January 18, 2019 | 4 Comments »

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  1. Israel Hayom has this excellent article about one of the most pernicious American Jewish groups that is struggling to break up the Israel-diaspora marriage, in this case by infiltrating and sabotaging Birthright.

    The true face of If Not Now
    A new group of young American Jews has come into our lives, one that goes by the name of If Not Now. Members of the organization made headlines when they were supposedly thrown off a Taglit-Birthright trip to Israel for asking questions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    But these were not young people whose natural curiosity was spontaneously piqued on a trip to Israel, rather activists who belong to a radical organization sent specifically on Birthright trips to disrupt them. These are not even young people who support the two-state solution, but political activists who refuse, both as individuals and on an organizational level, to declare their support for Israel’s right to exist with or without Judea and Samaria.

    The problem, of course, is not the raising of questions, a legitimate activity in any discussion that takes place inside a democratic and diverse society, but the callous exploitation at the expense of program participants of the framework of a particular activity to promote their ideas.

    There are dozens of left-wing, Israeli and American, Jewish and non-Jewish organizations that offer tours of Israel that reflect If Not Now’s worldview. I am confident that none of the activists who snuck onto the Birthright tour would have had a problem joining any of them. These activists knowingly showed up for a trip that does not reflect their positions and does not focus on the issues to which they wanted to draw attention. They not only exploited the generosity of the donors who fund Birthright but prevented other young people, who were interested in connecting to their Jewish identity and learning about the State of Israel, from having the opportunity to do so as they saw fit.

    Birthright tours focus on connecting young American Jews to their Jewish identity. This is not a geopolitical tour or a tour that aims to teach participants about the history of the conflict. The activists’ ridiculous argument that Taglit-Birthright is “covering up” the conflict is baseless and irrelevant. Israel is a nation that has been around for thousands of years; it was not and should not be defined solely on the basis of the current conflict with our neighbors. While it is undoubtedly important for young Americans to learn about the conflict, there is no need for them to do so on a tour that aims to connect them to their Jewish identity and the history of their people.

    But the pattern of behavior of If Not Now reflects a far more serious problem in American public discourse. While the organization’s activists are purportedly committed to an open and tolerant society in which people of different opinions can voice their positions, in practice, they loudly impose their views on others. They rob those who have an opposing view or who have yet to consolidate their views of the right to learn and express themselves. In doing so, they reveal the limits of their tolerance: They are in favor of a pluralistic and open society for all but those who disagree with them.

    Ophir Dayan is a student at Columbia University, New York

  2. Thie closure of the print edition of the notorious “Forward” and the sacking of much of its staff will make a modest contribution to improving American-Jewish -Israeli relations.

    Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News

    Wednesday, January 16, 2019Elder of Ziyon
    The Jewish Daily Forward @jdforward fires editor-in-chief. It has hemorrhaged over $70 million over the years.

    From The New York Post:
    The Forward is stopping — its print editions.

    The storied Jewish-American publication is suspending its print operations and plans to lay off about 40 percent of its editorial staff — including Editor-in-Chief Jane Eisner — while moving to digital-only.

    A print publication for 121 years, The Forward will continue to produce an English-language and a Yiddish-language edition online.

    The Forward is eyeing growth among its under-35 readers who prefer to read news online. Currently that segments amounts to a third of total readers.

    “The revenue is not really there,” said a source. “They’ve been losing money for years but lately the losses have been more than $5 million a year.”

    The publication is owned by The Forward Association, a not-for-profit whose endowment swelled to more than $100 million when the association sold its former headquarters on the Lower East Side as well as the radio station WEVD.
    Back in November, Forward writer Jonathan Nathan-Kazis asked people to help him find dirt on Jewish charities – but his own non-profit employer has been throwing away far more money than most of the supposed scandals he has been reporting on in the Jewish world.

    That $100 million that the Forward Association used to have? That was in 2001, when it sold WEVD to Disney for $78 million.

    As of 2016, its total assets dipped below $40 million, and at the rate of losing over $5 million a year, that means it is now down to probably less than $30 million. (They have not yet filed their 2017 forms, let alone 2018.)

    Eisner’s compensation of some $250,000 a year will hardly make a dent in the amount The Forward is hemorrhaging.

    My back of the envelope estimate is that the annual losses at the Forward will now be trimmed to “only” $3.2 million or so (possibly more if their print subscriptions were a majority of the subscription revenue.)

    As far as trying to appeal to more people under 35, I guess we can expect more “journalism” like the literally antisemitic article about the 15 Women You Meet When You Date Jews In New York.

    The Forward has already slid into irrelevance. Young Jews who care about Judaism and Israel won’t read it, so the new webzine will amp up its articles targeted at its audience of young Jews who hate Israel and Judaism. And why should they want to read an ostensibly Jewish newspaper?

    I predict that The Jewish Daily Forward will drop the “Jewish” part within five years.

  4. Vic is on target in his analysis of the causes of the rift. But wrong in his implied suggestion that Israel should refrain from criticizing diaspora Jews who defame it.