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AMERICAN JEWRY
Having just returned from a three week trip and lecture tour in the United States I undoubtedly qualify as an expert on the state of affairs of the Jewish society there. I was in a number of cities on both the West Coast and East Coast of that vast country. I visited different communities with different shades of observant practices and Jewish and world outlooks.
There is a great deal of concern in the established and religious Jewish communities about the fate of the State of Israel. Iran looms as a much more dangerous threat in the eyes of Jews in Los Angeles and Brooklyn than it does in the daily lives of we Israelis living in Jerusalem. Everyone (well, almost everyone) asked me “Aren’t you afraid to be living in Israel now?” They looked at me incredulously when my response was in effect “I don’t know what you are talking about!”
The subliminal truth is that this section of American Jewry cannot imagine how it would survive and prosper if, God forbid, anything happened to the State of Israel. They are afraid for us but they are equally afraid for themselves. They have a subconscious fear that the Golden Land may not be so golden to them if Israel is no longer a factor in American and Jewish life. Therefore their anxiety about Israel is two-fold. It is about us here in the Holy Land but it is also about themselves and their future in American life. Apparently in their view the two are deeply intertwined.
The vast majority of American Jews are liberals first and Jews second or third or not at all. American Jews paradoxically were originally disturbed when, for its first thirty years, Israel was governed by the left and was a socialistic society and economy. When Israel finally abandoned socialism, paradoxically, again American Jewry in the main became predominantly leftist, doctrinally liberal and married to the Democratic Party no matter what.
Now that Israel is cast as a villain by the left for various reasons American Jews are very uncomfortable with Israel. It is too Jewish, too traditional, too observant, too stubborn, too strong, too inflexible, too Orthodox and it is insufficiently liberal. Therefore it has to change to meet these demands of American Jewish liberals.
In their frustration with Israel and in a spectacular exhibition of complete assimilation that borders on self-hate, Israel has become an object of scorn and shame to many of them. Alienated from any observance of Judaism, devoid of Jewish values and ignorant of Torah and tradition, it has bought into the Arab propaganda line that Israel is an illegitimate state and an “occupier” of the land of others.
The Jews on college campuses all over America are deluged with this propaganda and since they themselves have no background or meaningful Jewish education they succumb very easily to this chimera, especially since it fits in nicely into the present view of the liberals in the United States. And make no mistake, this insidious liberalism is the new Jewish religion for a very large section of American Jewry.
There are however bright spots in this picture. AIPAC has triumphed mightily over J Street and congressional support for Israel remains strong in spite of the policies and pronouncements of the current administration on the Middle East. There is still a great deal of sympathy for Israel amongst the American general public, though the efforts of Israeli “hasbara” in the United States have proven to be really feeble. Even such forcible spokesmen as Dore Gold and Alan Dershowitz have not been able to stem the tide of Arab propaganda that daily inundates the American media and college campuses.
The New York Times is especially vicious in its anti-Israel bias and in the type of articles that its Jerusalem correspondent writes for publication. As the flagship of the liberal media in the United States it shapes the liberal view of Israel and it is a very unflattering one. The New York Times no longer has an opinion writer such as William Safire writing in defense of Israel. And since, as I pointed out previously, liberalism is the religion of much of American Jewry, the New York Times is its bible.
The fact that the most vocal defenders of Israel are the rabidly conservative radio talk show hosts has a counter productive effect upon the liberal American Jew He now associates Israel with Rush Limbaugh - the archenemy of liberalism in America. If you hate Rush you won’t like Israel either, the apparent result of all of this. Well, times and ideas change so the final verdict on American Jewry vis a vis Israel is yet to be written.
