Introduction

“Never in the past was the great Jewish community of the United States so united around Israel, standing together.” On June 18, 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin addressed those words to a gala dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. Attended by Jewish notables, representatives of major Jewish organizations, and wealthy donors, the dinner’s purpose was to provide financial support for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, which had begun twelve days earlier. The fact that the affair raised a record $27 million was impressive but not unexpected. American Jews had long been extremely responsive to Israel’s needs, especially in times of crisis. Equally predictable, not one of the assembled guests gave the slightest public expression to American Jews’ growing anxiety about Israel’s decision to extend the invasion beyond her self-imposed twenty-five-mile limit. Critical silence concerning Israel’s policies had become as much a characteristic of American Jews as their generosity. The uni cation of American Jews around Israel, the creation of hugely successful mechanisms for financial and political support, and the nearly absolute prohibition of public Jewish criticism of Israel were among the most noteworthy achievements of organized American Jewry during the 1960s and 1970s. Whatever the issue, Israel could count on the enthusiastic, unified support of American Jews almost without exception.

Fifteen years later, in November 1997, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the United States. At his principal speech in Indianapolis many in the audience protested, by wearing buttons that read “Don’t write off four million Jews,” Israel’s failure to fully recognize the religious legitimacy of America’s Conservative and Reform movements. Others passed out leaflets admonishing the assembly not to applaud too loudly lest the prime minister confuse respect for his office with support for his religious and political policies. In contrast to the usual rapturous reception given by American Jews to an Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu was accorded a polite but distinctly chilly hearing. Especially noteworthy was that he was speaking to the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations, an organization distinguished both by its pivotal role in the Jewish community and by its long tradition of largely unquestioning support for the Jewish state. Indeed, local federations had done much over the years to enforce the ban on public Jewish criticism of Israel. But to Netanyahu’s consternation, sharp disagreements over religious legitimacy, the Palestinians’ political aspirations, and the peace process had reached the center of the Jewish Establishment—which now felt little inhibition in airing its dissatisfactions publicly.

The division at the center reflects the centrifugal forces that have divided the rest of American Jewry from one another and from the State of Israel. Jewish unity has fragmented, the vaunted Israel lobby has often been paralyzed for lack of community consensus, and the disciplined public statements regarding Israel have given way to very public disagreements over politics and religion. Remarkably, some American Jewish organizations don’t even hesitate to lobby Congress against Israeli policies. Conflict between American Jews and Israelis over the “Who is a Jew” question has reached such levels of public rancor that principals and commentators speak of irretrievable breaches and of declarations of war. While such threats may be more rhetorical than real, there is no doubt that we are witnessing the emergence of a new relationship between American Jews and Israel.

This book examines the nature and development of American Jews’ relations with Israel since its birth in 1948. It emphasizes the rise of community consensus and its subsequent dissolution in the face of a series of critical confrontations between American Jews and the Jewish state. The invasion of Lebanon, the Pollard spy case, the Palestinian Intifada, and the “Who is a Jew” controversy have transformed the American Jewish relationship with Israel. Any attempt to understand this transformation must also examine the larger story upon which it is based—the evolution of Jewish identity in both America and Israel.

The relationship between American Jews and Israel has long been notable for its ironies and contradictions. In the pre-state era, even though Zionism was personally irrelevant to most American Jews, their extraordinary fundraising efforts and political support made possible the very birth of the Jewish state. Once Israel was established and particularly after the 1967 war, no citizens of one country have ever been so committed to the success of another as American Jews have been to Israel. Yet the vast majority of American Jews have remained astonishingly ignorant about the object of their devotion. Despite their support of and obsession with Israel, the Jewish state has had relatively little effect on the religious and cultural life of American Jews. The key to these apparent contradictions lies in the fact that from the 1890s to the present, American Jews’ response to Zionism and Israel has been circumscribed by American priorities and needs. From their early indifference to Zionism, through a quarter century of unequivocal support for Israel, to the breakdown of consensus in the 1970s and 1980s and the present fragmentation, American Jews have related to Israel primarily through their identity as Americans.

It was in part because Israel met the domestic needs of the majority of American Jews that the community was able to unite so strongly around the Jewish state. In the post–World War II era, American Jews moved into the mainstream of American life. As they assimilated their way toward the creation of what Charles Silberman has called “the first free Diaspora society,” overt religious observance declined, and Judaism became increasingly nostalgic and sentimental. To equate Israel with Jewishness was for many a comforting way to avoid the encumbrances of religion by focusing one’s Jewish identity on a secular state eight thousand miles from home. Israel’s image as a secular, progressive, pragmatic, and democratic state accorded with American Jews’ self-conceptions and provided a convenient way to present their identity to the larger society. The new Jewishness, which arose in suburban America, built itself primarily around participation in local Israel-centered organizations or activities, which became for many the principal component of Jewish life.

The Six-Day War of 1967 transformed Israel into an object of secular veneration. More than any other single event, it forged the American Jewish unanimity on Israel. The slowly developing crisis of May and June, which, in the language of some, seemed to presage another Holocaust, elicited an unprecedented level of concern and support from American Jews. Immeasurable relief and pride in the magnitude of Israel’s unexpected victory led to an outpouring of emotion that stunned even Israel’s most fervent supporters. In addition, when certain portions of American Jewry who felt attacked by elements of the Left saw the same forces castigate Israel as conquerors, their sense of parallel beleaguerment further strengthened identification with the Jewish state. Since the emergence of Black pride had made overt ethnicity acceptable, American Jews felt increasingly free to express their attachment to Israel in ethnic as well as religious terms. Given Israel’s new status as a target of the Left, the American Jewish community devoted much of its efforts to political lobbying, which was so effective that by 1970 support of Israel had become a foundation of American foreign policy.

Feelings of pride and vulnerability determined the American Jewish relationship to Israel for the next fifteen years. Scholars spoke of “Israelolatry.” The Jewish state had become “the new civil religion of American Jews.” In this devotion the role of prophet was filled not by the remote and forbidding Theodore Herzl but by the charismatic and sensationally photogenic David Ben Gurion. The role of high priest was played by United Nations representative (and sometimes foreign minister) Abba Eban, loved by American Jews for his urbane sophistication, for his beautifully crafted speeches defending Israel, and for his Cambridge-accented bons mots. The romantic warrior figure of General Moshe Dayan, who more than any Israeli captured the imagination of American Jewry as the exemplar of the “new Jew,” provided an avenging angel. These larger-than-life personalities, collectively embodying Israeli virtues of vision, intelligence, and courageous action, did battle against the forces of darkness symbolized by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser whose threats might not always be credible but could invariably be counted on to be suitably apocalyptic.

In such circumstances a body of dogma arose that was accepted by both Israeli and American Jews. The first was expressed by the Hebrew phrase Ein Breira (There is no alternative). Given the eternal vow of the Arab confrontation states “to destroy the Zionist entity,” Israel had no option but to pursue the hardest line of political and military policies. The other was expressed by Ma Yomru ha Goyim? (What will the Gentiles say?). Because of the pervasiveness of world anti-Semitism and Israel’s political and military vulnerability, any public criticism of Israel by the Diaspora, it was feared, would play into the hands of those who wished to destroy her. Even private criticism was discouraged, since American Jews generally felt that only Israelis could assess their own situation and that it was immoral for those who lived in peace and security to discuss policies that might put Israeli lives at risk. At the local level, enforcement of this orthodoxy often fell to the federations, which did their job so effectively that by the late 1960s criticizing Israel was seen as a worse sin than marrying out of the faith.

For over a decade, American Jews were able to maintain their comfortable and closed system of black-and-white morality. The 1973 war and the success of the oil embargo seemed to have made the Arab states even more uncompromising. The infamous United Nations resolution of 1975, characterizing Zionism as racism, highlighted the persistence of anti-Semitism and of world hostility to Israel. If the word Palestinian was mentioned at all, it was usually in connection with the appalling terrorism that made Israeli hard-line policies and world Jewish unity all the more imperative.

Beginning in the late 1970s, however, fundamental changes in both Israel and the Middle East began to undermine the old certainties. In May 1977 the Labor Party, which had ruled Israel since its inception, was unexpectedly defeated by the Likud coalition of Menachem Begin. The vision, tactics, and ideals of the new prime minister and his party starkly contrasted with the liberal and pragmatic secularism of the Laborites, who had detested Begin during his three decades of political opposition. A disciple of the rightist Vladimir Jabotinsky, personally Orthodox, and allied with the religious parties, Begin’s program and priorities differed greatly from the American Jewish mainstream. His small stature, thick glasses, and thicker Polish accent were a far cry from the urbane, sophisticated, tough Israeli “new Jew” with whom the Americans so happily identified. It was both an indication of the power of Israel-centered American Jewish organizations and the good faith of their constituencies that, initially at least, American Jews lined up solidly behind the new prime minister. But in the long run the rise of Likud, with its alternative vision and policies, meant that for American Jews there was no longer one Israel from which to take direction.

Anwar Sadat’s peace initiative was of even greater importance in ultimately undermining American Jewish unity. It fulfilled the over-worked term revolution; a sudden, unexpected sea change in the diplomatic and psychological structure of the Middle East. It provided Israel, for the first time in almost thirty years of existence, major alternatives in foreign policy. In the short run it provoked conflict within Israel and with American Jews over how to best respond to the initiative, particularly over the desirability of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. More crucially, it set into motion events and developments that both increased Israeli security and presented its government with a whole range of controversial choices. The former made conflict within Israel more acceptable; the latter provided a seemingly endless basis for it.

Presented with a politically divided Israel and with new and portentous policy choices, American Jewish unity on Israel began to break down. A series of crises, both foreign and domestic, within and outside the Jewish community, pushed American Jews toward a less idealized view of Israel and encouraged their growing sense of independence. The first of these was Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. As Israel’s first “optional war” it was fought not only to free Northern Galilee from PLO shelling but for the political objective of suppressing Palestinian nationalism. Within Israel the invasion elicited unprecedented domestic protest, particularly after the army disregarded the government’s self-imposed twenty-five-mile limit and headed toward Beirut. In what might be seen as the last hurrah of the old patterns, most American Jews initially swallowed their own misgivings and strongly supported the action. But the Sabra and Chatilla massacres, committed by Lebanese forces while Israel controlled the region, led to a level of shock and protest that was an actual if pale re ection of the level of anguish in Israel itself. Appalled by Israel’s association with the massacre, many American Jews for the first time began to consider that the potential benefit of public protest might actually outweigh its long accepted negative consequences. For others the massacre called into question the cherished notion that Israel was qualitatively different from other states. At the very least the subsequent Israeli inquiries into the massacres forced American Jews to see that Israeli leaders could be just as prone to stupidity, arrogance, and mendacity as those of other states.

The Pollard spy case was even more divisive. While Lebanon was an Israeli concern, the arrest of an American Jew on charges of spying for Israel went to the heart of the American Jewish—Israeli relationship. By exposing American Jews to charges of dual loyalty and by putting Israel’s “special relationship” with the United States at risk, Israel’s leaders were seen by American Jews as having been arrogant, stupid, or both. In the United States they took the lead in protesting Israel’s actions and in demanding that those responsible be punished. The Israelis, who saw their running of an American Jewish spy as promoting their paramount concern of national survival, considered the American Jewish protests to be naive, self-serving, and even cowardly. The exposure of this gulf between the two peoples produced a rancorous public airing of mutual resentments that had been carefully kept in check for almost four decades. Most significantly, mainstream American Jewish organizations took the lead in criticizing Israel and in defending American Jewry from Israeli attacks. Their new independence and diminished view of Israel’s leaders would soon impel them to take their own Middle Eastern initiatives, even on security issues.

The Palestinian Intifada, which began in 1987, converted American Jewish disagreement with Israeli policy into a mass phenomenon. American Jews were so deeply affected by television images of Israeli soldiers clubbing young rioters that they did not rush to Israel’s defense when its methods of suppressing the rebellion were universally attacked. Instead, unprecedented numbers joined the critical chorus, leading to what would become a permanent cleavage in the American Jewish community. Many American Jewish supporters of Israeli policy considered the American Jewish critics to be politically naive traitors whose actions might fatally weaken the Jewish state. Critics replied that Israeli policies were so dangerous that failure to criticize might have the same result. For the first time a substantial portion of the American Jewish community had begun to attack not specific Israeli actions but the whole thrust of Israeli foreign policy. By 1990 about three quarters of American Jews declared themselves to be in favor of talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

By raising the possibility of a peace treaty with the Palestinians, the election of Yitzhak Rabin in August 1992 reinforced the fragmentation in both Israel and the United States. In America the religiously Orthodox and the politically conservative, who had long equated public Jewish criticism of Israel with treason, now excoriated the Rabin government as too willing to trade land for peace. As conflict within Israel over a possible settlement reached a level of bitterness that encouraged Rabin’s assassination, Israeli politicians, especially from the Right, moved to co-opt American Jews into the rough-and-tumble of Israeli politics. Many came to America to raise funds and build new constituencies, which, after all, were only a fax transmission away. American Jewish reaction to the Oslo Peace Treaty in October 1993 again highlighted the growing fragmentation among American Jews. While most gave the treaty at least lukewarm support, the Right adamantly opposed it and even lobbied Congress against the Labor government policies. The assassination of Rabin and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu replaced rightist outrage at the “selling out” of Israel with liberal outrage at Netanyahu for “destroying the peace process.” In any case the image of American Jewry “united around Israel standing together” became only a fond memory.

The most protracted and bitter crisis, the “Who is a Jew” controversy, embodies many of the societal tensions released by Israel’s new position of relative security. The philosophical contradictions of Israel’s foundation, its imperfect parliamentary system, the growing power of the Orthodox, and the decline of traditional Zionism, as well as the growing assertiveness of American Jewry, produced a political cataclysm, the substance of which is overwhelmed by its symbolism. The ostensible issue—whether Israel will continue to recognize as Jews those converted outside the state by Conservative or Reform rabbis—affects no more than a handful of American Jews per year. But American Jews rightly recognize the controversy as having greater import for both themselves and Israel. They see the Orthodox rejection of their converts as delegitimizing over 80 percent of the community, reducing them to “second-class Jews.” Psychologically, this strikes at the heart of their connection with Israel, which is so vital to their sense of Jewish identity.

The loud condemnation of the Israeli Orthodox by many American Jews, the drop in charitable contributions, and the endless stream of Conservative and Reform leaders journeying to Israel to express their objections, indicated the depth and breadth of American Jewish rage. The controversy also ighlights the ever growing connections between the American and Israeli ultra-Orthodox and the distancing of both from the American Jewish mainstream. For many years one of the principal advocates of nonrecognition of Conservative and Reform conversions was the Brooklyn-based Lubavicher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson. It is hardly coincidental that at the height of the crisis the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, a minor but vocal rabbinical group, issued an inflammatory statement declaring that Conservative or Reform Judaism is not Judaism at all. For their part many mainstream American Jews no longer view the Israeli ultra-Orthodox as benign surrogates for their own religious impulses but as dangerous fanatics threatening both Mideast peace and Israeli society. The outcome and implications of the controversy are of utmost importance for Israel’s future. Beneath the religious rhetoric the real issue is what kind of Israel will emerge, one increasingly dominated by a triumphantly uncompromising Orthodoxy or a democracy embodying the values of pluralism and pragmatic compromise. The external implications of the crisis are equally important, since its outcome will do much to determine Israel’s future relationship not only with American Jewry but with America itself.

Ironically, the current tumult masks the most crucial transformation in the American Jewish—Israeli relationship, a decline in the importance of Israel to American Jews. While the volume and variety of public dissent has increased among the committed, overall fewer American Jews may be listening or caring. This is in part the inevitable result of the passage of time. Those who experienced the Holocaust and the birth of Israel are dying, and emotions, even of unimaginable horror and boundless ecstasy, lose potency over generations. Israel’s heroic age has similarly passed. The desert has bloomed, millions of immigrants have been absorbed, the country has defended itself against great odds, and it has produced a high culture with democratic values. Fractious normalcy has replaced the emotional high points of the founding of the state, the Six-Day War, and the Entebbe raid. A contemporary video clip of young Israeli soldiers manning a check point in East Jerusalem simply lacks the emotional resonance of the image of their fathers praying at the newly liberated Western Wall.

Other bases of the bond between American Jews and Israel also are weakening. The secular, humanistic Zionism with which American Jews have so identified has become passe—Israeli commentators now speak of a post–Zionist Age—and the religious nationalism that threatens to replace it inspires few American Jews but the ultra-Orthodox. Israel’s economic development has made American Jewish contributions far less crucial, and the decline in political consensus has often prevented the unified lobbying that has historically been the other major task of American Jews. Given the failure of Israeli and mainstream American Jewry to produce meaningful cultural bonds, there is less and less to connect the two peoples.

Indeed, American Jews have begun to focus on their own internal problems. Less than half of American Jews belong to a synagogue, many spend less than three days a year there, and an intermarriage rate of close to 50 percent has raised questions about the future of the Jewish community. Among many Jewish professionals there has been a belated recognition that a half century of obsession with Israel has encouraged the neglect of the educational and spiritual infrastructure necessary to assure American Jewish continuity. Any number of studies, commissions, and task forces have identi ed a crisis in Jewish education resulting from underqualified teachers, ossified curricula, and an inability to reach the younger generation. As one educator noted, “America is where the battlefield is, not the Mideast.”

This is something of a false dichotomy. There is little to suggest that had Israel not come into existence, American Jewry would somehow have done better at arresting its spiritual decline. On the contrary, even the vicarious identity that Israel provides is, for many Americans, the major focus and expression of their Jewishness. At worst, Israel has for two generations furnished a rear guard defense against the assimilationist forces that have affected almost all immigrant groups. Short of a spiritual revival within the Jewish mainstream, Israel still remains the best hope of maintaining a mass American Jewish identity. If, however, the gradual distancing of the mass of American Jews from Israel continues, it may lead to a final irony—that for all American Jews’ sincere concern and obsession, their relationship with Israel might be simply a way station on the road to assimilation.

(c) 2001 Brandeis University Press

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