Where is TheLove?

The current state of the complicated romance between American Jews (especially younger ones) and the Jewish state.

The Salute to Israel parade, the annual love-fest up Fifth Avenue. Michael Datikash

by Jerome Chanes
Special To The Jewish Week

The State of Israel has maintained iconic status in the minds of American Jews for 60 years. American Jewish attitudes have been refracted through the prism of the long-standing “love affair” between American Jews and Israel. Sounds simple? It ain’t. Flat fundraising, low aliyah numbers, lower rates of “affiliation” with Israel, even lower number of trips to Israel (“birthright israel” and other programs notwithstanding) — tell a bleak tale of American Jewry’s relationship to the Jewish state.

From a historical perspective — and contrary to conventional wisdom — Israel simply was not on the radar screen of the organized Jewish community (and, indeed, for most American Jews) from shortly after the creation of the State of Israel until the Six-Day War in 1967, when

Israel for the first time burst upon American Jewish consciousness. The American Zionist movement — never powerful in any case among the grass roots — all but collapsed. There was not a robust Zionist organizational establishment in America, as there was in other lands; civil rights, anti-Semitism, and church-state separation were the priority issues on the American Jewish public-affairs agenda in the decades before 1967 — not Israel; Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, with his pronouncements on Zionism and the Diaspora, continued giving heartburn to American Jews. A “love affair” it wasn’t.

The highly nuanced story begins with the 1949 visit by David Ben-Gurion to the United States, during the course of which, in addressing Hadassah and other Jewish groups, the Yishuv leader, now premier of the new state, called for large-scale immigration to Israel by American Jewish youth.

“We will steal your children!” cried Ben-Gurion, in effect, to the Hadassah delegates. This, on the heels of assurances from the Jewish Agency to Jewish groups, even before the state was established, that the Jewish state would refrain from interfering in American Jewish internal affairs.

It did not take long for Jacob Blaustein, head of the then-regnant American Jewish Committee and therefore “King of the Jews,” to present himself in Ben-Gurion’s office, suggesting that the Israeli leader was jeopardizing (among other things) fundraising on behalf of Israel. For his part, it did not take Ben-Gurion 30 seconds to make a 180-degree turn from one of the fundamental principles of Zionism, namely aliyah. Ben-Gurion admitted that American Jews were not in exile, that “Kibbutz Galuyoth” — the all-important “ingathering of exiles” — therefore did not apply to them, and that “the Jews of America ... owe no political allegiance to Israel.”

The Ben Gurion-Blaustein exchange defined forever the relationship between American Jews and the Jewish state — a result of which was that American aliyah was rarely a significant dynamic — even as Ben-Gurion himself frequently reneged on the deal. In 1963, the now-retired prime minister sent a note to Blaustein: “Dear Yaacov [sic!] — don’t be afraid of dual loyalty.”

The reality, sad indeed — and not a new story at all — is that American Jews have long been distancing themselves from Israel. Data from a 2007 study conducted by Steven M. Cohen re-affirm something we have long known: Young Jews — and these are the ones who count — do not want to be seen as different from other young Americans; they don’t draw “hard-group boundaries,” and they feel that Israel pushes them into that corner. Further, an important indicator — the number of visits to Israel by American Jews — has been flat for years. And what more can be said about aliyah that has not already been said? In large measure, aliyah is Orthodox-ideology driven, and remains relatively small in terms of the larger American Jewish demographic picture. There are no indications that this is about to change.

The even-more sad reality is that it is rare to find in our day schools and yeshivahs the teaching of the history of the “Yishuv”; almost never do we hear songs of the Chalutzim, the pioneers of the Second and Third Aliyot who developed the Land of Israel; rare indeed do we find that our children are learning the literature of the Yishuv — our literary patrimony — in Hebrew; indeed, even more rare is it to find that our children are learning Hebrew itself — all of which were standard in the yeshiva curriculum when I was a child. Young people alienated from Israel? Imagine my surprise!

But the data are mixed. On the one hand, we have the Steven M. Cohen study of young American Jews. On the other hand, researcher Charles Kadushin of Brandeis’ Steinhardt Social Research Institute challenges this notion that American Jews — young adults in particular — are growing more distant from Israel. Kadushin and his Brandeis colleagues point to increased participation levels in programs such as birthright israel, which offers free trips to Israel for 18- to 26-year-olds, even as there is an overall weakening of ties to Israel.

Also, there are data from the “Survey of American Jewish Public Opinion,” an annual survey conducted by Market Facts for the American Jewish Committee, that suggest that American Jews have indeed not grown more distant from Israel; indeed, the AJC/Market Facts data reveal a resilience of American Jewry’s connection to Israel. The Market Facts numbers are important; they tell us that over the past decade and a half, 75 percent of American Jews agree that “caring about Israel is a very important part of my being a Jew,” and that 70 percent feel “close to Israel.”
It is not entirely clear to anyone, however, what these numbers mean. To the casual reader, “caring” and “feeling close” are fuzzy in the extreme; these locutions tell us nothing about activity on behalf of Israel. Significant activity — visiting Israel, financial donations, public-affairs advocacy on behalf of Israel — except in times of crisis has been flat for decades.

So where are we? As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state, there is the paradox on the one hand of Israel remaining as the prime reality for many American Jews, and the increased participation in many Israel-oriented programs; and, on the other, the weakening of ties with Israel.

From a historical perspective, my sense is that what we are seeing is the playing out in this area as in many others of the new destiny for Jews, a destiny no longer positioned in Europe, as it was for 2,000 years. Jewish destiny over the past 60 years is reflected in the friendly competition between two new, absolutely unique, historical realities: Jewish sovereignty, as represented by Israel; and the pluralism of America. The competition between these two historical and political realities is not a bad thing, whatever the pitfalls. Stay tuned.

Jerome A. Chanes is Faculty Scholar at Brandeis University and is the author of
numerous books and articles on American Jewish public affairs.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization