Playing the Blame Game
April 7, 2016 § 5 Comments
Everywhere you look, there are signs that Israel and American Jews are drifting apart, whether it be the Pew surveys on American Jews and Israeli Jews, the involvement of American Jews in organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace that support the BDS movement, or the general angst about Israel that is becoming more prevalent in the American Jewish community. There is little question that from a 30,000 foot perspective, American Jews as a whole are in ways large and small more conflicted on Israel than they once were. So it is only natural to ask, who is to blame for this state of affairs? Is it Israel, for policies that are driving away American Jews, or is it American Jews, for shedding their sense of ethnic solidarity and their support for Israel along with it?
Dov Waxman – who wrote on this topic for Matzav a few weeks ago – has a new book out on the subject called Trouble in the Tribe, which elicited an interesting response in Mosaic from Elliott Abrams. Abrams characterizes Waxman’s book as distilling the conventional wisdom in liberal American Jewish circles, which is that rightwing Israeli governments, growing nationalism within Israeli society, and above all the occupation have turned off younger American Jews, and that only a shift in Israeli policies will turn this situation around (disclaimer: I have not yet read the book so I cannot definitively assess whether Abrams’ summation is accurate, but it seems to be from what I have seen). Abrams then goes on to argue that this conventional wisdom is wrong, and that the real driving force here is not Israel but American Jews themselves; as a sense of Jewish peoplehood and Jewish community has eroded, American Jews relate less and care less about their Israeli cousins. In Abrams’s words, “But the beginning of wisdom is surely to understand that the problem is here, in the United States. The American Jewish community is more distant from Israel than in past generations because it is changing, is in significant ways growing weaker, and is less inclined and indeed less able to feel and express solidarity with other Jews here and abroad.”
I vigorously agree with some of Abrams’ conclusions, and just as vigorously disagree with others. Abrams is certainly correct in my view that there is a crisis of Jewish identity in the U.S. that is backed by the Pew statistics, and that support for Israel among American Jews is going to continue to slide by some degree so long as intermarriage rates rise and the proportion of “Jews by background” versus “Jews by religion” goes up. Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, and there is no reason beyond ethnic or religious solidarity to specifically identify with it and support it in a stronger or special manner above other democracies or U.S. allies. If Judaism is only ancillary to your identity, then you likely have no particular reason to care about Israel one way or another. In discussing this identity gap, Abrams writes, “A deeper analysis suggests that we are dealing here with a far broader phenomenon, and one in which sheer indifference may count as much as or more than critical disagreement with Israeli policies or an active desire to disembarrass oneself of association with an ‘ethnonational state.’” The point about indifference is a smart one, and it follows from an erosion of Jewish peoplehood.
But this same sentence penned by Abrams also demonstrates where he goes wrong. One can argue that a lack of Jewish identity leads to apathy about Jewish causes, including Israel, or one can argue that a lack of Jewish identity leads to active disagreement with Jewish causes, including Israel, but it cannot be both simultaneously. The former suggests someone who doesn’t care; the latter suggests someone who deeply cares. And this is where Israel itself comes in, because unless you want to argue that American Jews who are critical of Israel are all self-loathing – and to be clear, I do not think that Abrams is arguing this at all – then the fact that many of them are put off by specific Israeli policies is incredibly relevant. It actually points to the very opposite conclusion at which Abrams arrives, since the greater likelihood is that someone whose American Jewish identity is extremely important to him or her will react viscerally to Israeli policies with which he or she disagrees than someone whose Judaism is well in the background. Abrams’s mocking contention that American Jews today cannot possibly know more about Israel than their parents or grandparents is surprisingly obtuse; despite the fact that Bernie Sanders somehow got it into his head that Israel killed over 10,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge (Hamas itself puts the figure at 1,462, which is surely inflated too), American Jews today can read half a dozen daily Israeli news sources in Hebrew or English and literally get up-to-the-minute updates via Twitter, and they don’t like much of what they see. This is not the same phenomenon as Jews who are drifting away from Israel on the tide of assimilation.
Identity can manifest itself in different ways. Some American Jews who maintain a strong Jewish identity will support Israel right or wrong out of ethnic and communal solidarity. Others who maintain a strong Jewish identity will feel the need to criticize Israel precisely because their identity creates an unbreakable bond with Israel that makes them feel personally invested in and responsible for what Israel does. And somewhere on that spectrum will be others who feel ashamed and embarrassed by Israel and want to do everything they can to bash it, not out of affinity but out of hate. Finally, there is the category that Abrams importantly identifies of those who are simply apathetic because their Jewish heritage is relegated to the background. Some criticism of Israel is driven by anti-Semitism and blatantly discriminatory double standards, but much is not, and it also isn’t coming exclusively from those whose Jewish identity or sense of ethnic solidarity is weak. The point is that there are many moving parts here, and to draw a broad sweeping conclusion that applies to all of these segments of American Jewry misses the different phenomena that are working in tandem. To suggest that the effect of Israeli policies is negligible in driving American Jews away from Israel is either myopic or willfully blind, and it betrays a black and white vision of an issue that is slathered in shades of gray.
Two Peoples, One Tribe
March 17, 2016 § 2 Comments
I meant it when I wrote last week that I could easily mine the Pew study of Israeli society for a year’s worth of material, but I’ll try to make this week the last post on the subject for awhile. Perhaps the most interesting part of the study to me is the section comparing Israeli Jews and American Jews. As Dov Waxman noted in a long breakdown yesterday on Matzav, there is a yawning chasm on many issues between Jews in Israel and Jews in the U.S., to the extent that anyone looking at the numbers without any identifying information on the two groups would have a difficult time guessing that they were members of the same family, so to speak. What issues the two groups of Jews differ on is fascinating in itself, but the more fascinating aspect for me isn’t the what, but the why.
Breaking down the numbers, it’s clear that Israeli Jews tilt more towards the political right than their American counterparts, but it isn’t political differences that illuminate what is going on. Rather, Israeli Jews and American Jews are separated by a fundamental difference in worldview that transcends the political sphere. It is much more of a philosophical divide that is driven by the divergent historical and present day experiences of Israeli Jews and American Jews. For shorthand, let’s call this divide universalism versus particularism.
American Jews are very well integrated into the larger American milieu. Because of this, they view their Judaism as part of a universal system where wider rules and values are more important than in-group relationships. They are unquestionably happy about their heritage – 94% are proud to be Jewish and 75% feel a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people – but the history of Jews in America is one of cultural assimilation. While anti-Semitism will always exist everywhere, the United States in 2016 is largely devoid of it, and Jews face very little discrimination overall (I reserve the right to revisit this point should we face the apocalypse ushered in on January 20, 2017, by President Donald J. Trump). American Jews are not treated as a minority, and are not thought of as one in many circles. American Jews themselves do not behave as religious minorities in their willingness to transcend group boundaries in unusually large numbers. The intermarriage rate for non-Orthodox American Jews is over 70% and 44% of married American Jews currently have a non-Jewish spouse; American Jews are likelier than any other religious minority group to have close friends of another religion and only 32% say that all or most of their close friends are Jewish; and American Jews are generally much less religious than their Israeli counterparts. The universal perspective of American Jews makes their Judaism less omnipresent and in some ways less important, so that even while being proud of their Jewish heritage it does not dominate their identity. As Michael Oren pointed out in his memoir Ally, it is no accident that alone among minority groups, American Jews place the “American” clause first.
Israeli Jews have a much more particularistic worldview that is rooted in Israel’s reality. Israelis live with a siege mentality emanating from the fact that they are in a neighborhood that does not accept them, which makes group relationships and solidarity more important. Furthermore, the fact that Israeli Jews are a majority in their own country creates a bubble filled with constant reminders that they are Jews, which reinforces the tribal sense that external hostility creates. Judaism shapes Israeli identity in a way that is almost impossible to replicate in the current American Jewish experience, and thus Israeli Jews are more attached to their Judaism. Israeli Jews are more observant and theologically religious by every measure than their American cousins, and view their Judaism as such a dominant and influential presence that more Israeli Jews describe themselves as Jewish first than as Israeli first (46% to 35%). Israeli Jews do not see themselves as ensconced in a wider system in the way that American Jews do; their Judaism is necessarily a narrower one that is not focused on what Judaism has to offer to the rest of the world. The history of Israel’s creation and fight for existence, along with its ongoing quest for legitimacy and normalcy, lead to a Jewish community that is more inward looking and bound by elements that are unique to Jews.
This is seen most acutely when comparing the responses of Israeli and American Jews on what it means to be Jewish. Both rank remembering the Holocaust as first on the list of essential parts of being Jewish, but after that the answers diverge. For American Jews, four out of the next five responses have nothing to do with Judaism as a religion or culture, but espouse universal values that can apply to anyone (leading an ethical life, working for justice and equality, being intellectually curious, having a good sense of humor), with the one outlier being caring about Israel. Israeli Jews prioritize items that are exclusively Jewish, with observing Jewish law coming in third at 35% (only 19% for American Jews), living in Israel coming in fourth at 33%, and eating traditional Jewish foods sixth at 18%. When Israelis were not limited to the eight choices provided by Pew but were allowed to mention anything they wanted, Israeli Jews’ priorities were even starker. The biggest group of 53% gave an answer in the category of providing Jewish education to or sharing Jewish traditions with their children, and the second biggest group of 45% gave an answer in the category of following religious traditions or being religious. While American Jews and Israeli Jews share a religious, cultural, and ethnic heritage, what it means to be Jewish is vastly different for them.
The direct implications of this are difficult to foresee, although it has the potential to affect everything from the U.S.-Israel relationship to the practice of Judaism itself. One element that is encouraging is that both groups rate the importance of caring about Israel highly – 33% for Israelis, 43% for Americans – and more crucially, the two groups care about each other. 68% of Israeli Jews say they have something in common with American Jews, 75% say there is a common destiny, and 59% view American Jewry’s influence on Israel as good. As Joel Braunold wrote in Ha’aretz, these results show that American Jews and Israeli Jews aren’t yet sick of each other. While the way in which the two sets of Jews view their Judaism seems like it is at odds, Israeli views on American Jews ratifies and demonstrates the need for continued engagement, not shying away from controversial issues while being careful not to impose on Israelis, and jointly working toward the best version of Israel that can be.
The Thorny Question of Israeli Citizenship
May 15, 2012 § 2 Comments
There is a lot of buzz today over the decision by an Israeli court declaring that Judaism, rather than being born in Israel, is the appropriate determinant of citizenship for a petitioner who wanted his citizenship to be based on something other than his religion. Uzzi Ornan had asked the court to recognize his citizenship based on the fact that he was born in Palestine during the British Mandate and not on the fact that he was born Jewish since he says that he has no religion and thus does want to be classified as religiously Jewish. The court ruled that Ornan is Jewish according to the 1970 amendment to the Law of Return, which grants every Jew the right to move to Israel and automatically gain citizenship, and thus his self-definition is irrelevant.
This is not the first time that a similar case has come up. Ornan has tried this gambit before, and the court then noted that the determinant of citizenship is not a proper question for the courts to decide but is one that must be left to society. This idea is one that should be intimately familiar to Americans, as there is a long established tradition in U.S. legal history that courts may not rule on political questions that are best left to the executive and legislative branches. The issue of how to determine what makes someone a citizen of Israel certainly appears to fall into this category, and I think that the Haifa district court in this case did a good job of simply following the law it is written. It doesn’t mean that the law should necessarily remain this way, but rather that it is not the job of the courts to take up an issue that is clearly best left to the purview of the Knesset.
There are four ways in which to acquire Israeli citizenship: being born to an Israeli parent or being born on Israeli soil (although this second one is not automatic), immigrating to Israel and being subject to the Law of Return, being a former citizen of British Mandatory Palestine who remained following the establishment of Israel, and naturalization after residing in Israel for a set amount of time. Critics of Israel focus on this second path since it is open only to Jews, but as can be seen, citizenship generally is not restricted to only Jews (although it is easier for Jews to become citizens by virtue of the Law of Return). The problem that the court decision raises is that one’s Jewishness is determined based on a religious definition, which ipso facto makes Jewishness exclusively a religious category rather than an ethnic category. This is problematic both as a matter of history and policy.
The word Jew is derived from the Latin Iudaeus Greek Ioudaios, both of which were terms that originally denoted ethnicity and geography rather than religion by referring to residents of Judaea or the nation (but not religion) of Judaeans. In time, the term Judaean evolved into the term Jew, which had a religious dimension, but it was not always this way. Being a Jew has always meant a mix of things: ethnicity, religion, culture, and (in Antiquity) geography. While in some ways the Law of Return embraces ethnicity – a Jew is someone whose mother was Jewish – it is misleading since that is ultimately the religious definition; someone whose mother was not Jewish but whose father was is not considered to be Jewish according to halakha, and is thus not Jewish for the purposes of the Law of Return without undergoing a conversion. Thus, the ethnic aspect of being a Jew is discarded, which may comport with recent centuries of Jewish history but certainly does not comport with what it meant to be a Jew the last time Jews had sovereignty over the territory that now constitutes Israel.
More relevant to today is the fact that making Jewishness an exclusively religious category inserts the state into making some weighty personal decisions that it should not be making. Ornan says that he is not a Jew and that he has no religion, but the state of Israel disagrees and is telling the world that Ornan is an Israeli citizen specifically because he is Jewish and not because he was born on Israeli territory. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the state is putting itself in the business of arbitrating someone’s personal convictions on religion? Israel officially labels Ornan a Jew when he himself say that he is not, which might be the province of rabbinical authorities to do but shouldn’t be something in which the state should be engaging. It is one thing to create guidelines to determine whether someone who declares themselves Jewish is indeed Jewish, but it is altogether another thing to foist Jewishness upon someone who renounces it. Like I said, I’m not sure that the court had a choice in this matter based on the way the law is written, but it is something that the Knesset should certainly debate and clarify.
One final aspect to consider here is why the question of citizenship is so important. As Marc Howard has pointed out, in liberal democracies political rights are no longer a prerequisite to social and civil rights; one need not be a citizen but rather only must be a resident to enjoy the benefits of the state, and thus some argue that political rights (and hence citizenship) are not as important as they once were as they are not required as a gateway to gaining social rights. Marc’s book presents an elegant and persuasive argument that this argument is wrong and that even in the EU citizenship still matters greatly, but in Israel this is even more acute given Israel’s nature as a Jewish state. The preference that Israel gives to Jewish immigration and the easier pathway to citizenship for Jews is precisely because of Israel’s Jewish identity, and thus what should be a somewhat abstract legal question over the proper basis for Uzzi Ornan’s citizenship becomes something much larger. Here’s hoping that Israeli society takes up this question and reopens the debate, because as anyone who has observed the wide variation in religious observance and identification in Israel itself knows, Judaism in the 21st century is much more complex than a simple halakhic formula suggests. I believe that Israel is correct to zealously guard its Jewish identity and I defend its right to do so without qualification, but Jewish identity is something that should be borne by choice rather than by the state’s fiat.
