Israel Matzav: Why are American Jews abandoning Israel?

Why are American Jews abandoning Israel?

Daniel Gordis asks some hard questions about American Jewish support for Israel.

The loss of American Jewish love for Israel, I fear, is actually much more deeply rooted. The issue isn't Israel, or utopia. It's America, and the "I" at the core of American sensibilities.

Another profound observer of American Jewish life, Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendota Heights, Minnesota, recently wrote with sadness that for contemporary American Jews, life-cycle rituals have become infinitely more significant than the holiday cycle.

Both Sarna and Allen are actually pointing to a shared challenge.Most American Jews are first and foremost Americans. And today's America is about the celebration of individuality and a future unfettered by ethnic loyalties.

...

Similarly, the recreation of the State of Israel is truly powerful only against a backdrop of centuries of Jewish experience, and is spine-tingling only if my sense of self is inseparable from my belonging to a nation with a past and a people with a purpose.

In today's individualistic America, the drama of the rebirth of the Jewish people creates no goose bumps and evokes no sense of duty or obligation. Add the issue of Palestinian suffering, and Israel seems worse than irrelevant - it's actually a source of shame.

We're not terribly alarmed, but we should be. These young American Jews, after all, will soon control the coffers of the federations, and will sit on the boards of synagogues. Their generation will either strengthen or abandon AIPAC, the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). They will be the ones allocating funding to schools, setting curricula and communal priorities.

Indeed.

I discussed the Sarna article that Gordis cites here.

If anyone has any ideas, please let us know. The only thing I can think of is more free trips to Israel to try to get kids connected, but we're still not reaching most of them and that's an awfully expensive way of doing things.

If you don't recognize the picture go here.

Israel Matzav: Why are American Jews abandoning Israel?