Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May - June 2001, page 69

Israel and Judaism

 

The Growing Disconnect Between What American Jews Believe and Jewish Organizations Promote

 

By Allan C. Brownfeld

The two major crusades upon which American Jewish organizations have now embarked are a circling of the wagons in support of Ariel Sharon’s government in Israel and a campaign for Jewish “continuity” in the United States. The latter involves sending young people on free trips to Israel through the “Birthright Israel” program and launching a campaign against religious intermarriage and “assimilation.”

In both of these areas, the interests and views of Jewish organizations and self-proclaimed “leaders” appear to be at variance with the views of the vast majority of Americans of Jewish faith.

In fact, in the wake of Ariel Sharon’s election as prime minister of Israel and the continuing turmoil in the Middle East, what is really evident is not the degree of unity but the sharp division among American Jews.

On the one hand, leading Jewish organizations are now formulating a nationwide network to better promote pro-Israel messages throughout the country. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, states that, “Every morning a message goes out and every Palestinian has the right message,” when he or she talks to CNN or newspapers. Hoenlein envisions a new network as a counterpoint to that and suggests daily e-mail alerts and the posting of extensive information on the Internet as two of a number of ideas to improve advocacy for Israel in the media and elsewhere.

A new think tank, Emet (the Hebrew word for truth) has been established by activists Leonard Abramson, Michael Steinhardt and World Jewish Congress president Edgar Bronfman. The group’s goal is to present the Israeli government’s position on Middle East developments.

In Israel, however, there is concern that these American Jewish supporters of the Sharon government are poaching on the role of the Israeli government itself, and Israel’s peace camp is worried that hawkish American Jews will use Emet to push a hard-line to the peace process.

The nation’s leading pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has made it uncomfortable for those who advocate a peace process of compromise and conciliation with the Palestinians.

 

“Political insiders have long considered [AIPAC] a voice of the Israeli government….”

When Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) recently addressed AIPAC, he received a cool response when he defended the peace process. The Forward (March 23, 2001) reported that, “Mr. Lieberman, a longtime stalwart in AIPAC’s pro-Israel cause….devoted much of his speech to an emotional defense of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which he said remained vital despite the violence in the region. ‘I wish the year 2000 had ended not with an intifada, but with the signing of final status agreements,’ he said, to thunderous silence. The silence continued for minutes on end, as the senator explained the value of the Oslo accords, insisted that peace was in America’s best interest as well as Israel’s and called for the Bush administration not to ‘walk away’ from its ‘responsibility’ as an active mediator. By the time he ended his speech with a quote from Zionist legend Theodor Herzl—‘If you will it,’ he said, referring to Israeli-Palestinian peace, ‘it is no fantasy’—the crowd was visibly distressed. Individuals around the hall could be heard coughing, seemingly restraining the impulse to jeer.”

The Forward provided this assessment of AIPAC’s posture: “AIPAC is theoretically an extension of the national Jewish organizational community, and exists to lobby for American Jews’ consensus views on Israel. Political insiders have long considered that a polite fiction, covering the lobby’s true role as a voice of the Israeli government….Cynics say it is now the love of the fight that drives AIPAC’s top leaders. In this view, nothing frightens the lobby as much as a world at peace, in which Israel is no longer threatened and AIPAC’s services are no longer needed. That view of the lobby is too harsh…This week, though, it was hard not to think in those terms, as hundreds of the organization’s top activists gathered in high spirits to welcome the triumph of Ariel Sharon, the collapse of the peace process and the rebirth of fortress Israel. Israelis may be despondent over the escalating violence…Not so Israel’s friends in Washington…It is right for Jews to spring to Israel’s defense. It is wrong to so revel in the fight that one regrets the very prospect of peace.”

 

The Myth of “Unity”

The alleged “unity” of American Jews in support of the posture of the Sharon government is, of course, a myth. Early in March, for example, some 100 rabbis signed a letter to Prime Minister Sharon and President George W. Bush, calling on Sharon not to take steps to expand Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem and on Bush “to vigorously express American opposition to such unilateral steps.” Professor Jerome Segal, president of the Jewish Peace Lobby, under whose auspices the letter was sent, says, “The rabbis’ letter raises the fundamental question: Does Sharon, in his pursuit of an interim agreement, mean a time-out on the final status issues, or does he want to stop talking about them, while attempting unilaterally to foreclose the possibility of an interim agreement on shared sovereignty in Jerusalem through construction?”

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports that, “Thirty-five percent of American Jews are willing to see Jerusalem divided in order to secure a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a survey conducted in January and February on behalf of a joint committee representing five of the largest Jewish organizations in the United States. Chairing the committee is Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Committee representatives…refused to comment on the survey. Senior Jewish community leaders in New York said the survey results contradict the official position of the Presidents Conference, which asserts that the Jewish community is united in refusal to consider concessions over Jerusalem. The survey, described as one of the most extensive of American Jewish opinion in years, also showed that more than 50 percent said they support the peace process…”

While Jewish organizations place Israel at the “center” of their agenda, for the vast majority of American Jews Israel remains a largely peripheral interest.

In a new study, The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community In America (Indiana University Press), the authors, Steven N. Cohen, associate professor at the Melton Center for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Arnold M. Eisen, professor of religious studies at Stanford University, explored the foundations of belief and behavior among moderately affiliated American Jews.

The authors report that, “Their connection to Israel…is weak, as is the connection they feel to the organized Jewish community in America. They take for granted the compatibility of being both Jewish and American; this is simply not an issue anymore….They want to be Jewish because of what it means to them personally—not because of obligation to the Jewish group…or the historical destiny of the Jewish group…”

When asked about their emotional attachment to Israel, just nine percent of respondents answered “extremely attached” (as opposed to 13 percent in a similar survey in 1988). Only 20 percent in the survey thought it was essential for a good Jew to support Israel and even fewer (18 percent) had similar views with regard to visiting Israel in the course of one’s life.

Israel’s conduct with regard to the Palestinians and its refusal to permit non-Orthodox forms of Judaism to be freely practiced have alienated many American Jews. One respondent, Joy, said: “I think there are many different cultures that can lay claim to Palestine’s soil as their own, I think the Palestinians have been displaced. I think that is terribly unfortunate and I don’t think it should happen. I think that some kind of home for the Palestinians is correct.”

For David, it is the perceived prominence of right-wing political forces, especially when associated with what he regards as the “Orthodox lunatic fringe,” that drives him to distance himself from Israel: “Frankly even being vaguely associated with the Orthodox lunatic fringe in Israel, the [far-right] Kach groups, and [Ariel] Sharon, I have to say when Israel does something like that, that’s not my Israel. I’m not responsible for that.”

Professors Cohen and Eisen stress that, “It is no longer uncommon to find lukewarm-to-cool attitudes to Israel coexisting with warm-to-passionate feelings about being Jewish…Israel is not central to who American Jews are as Jews—and so the need to visit it, or learn about it, or wrestle with its importance to the Jewish people, is far from pressing.”

If Jewish organizations are misrepresenting the views of those in whose name they claim to speak when it comes to Israel and the Middle East, the same is true with regard to the recently launched crusade against religious intermarriage.

 

“Israel is not central to who American Jews are as Jews.”

In October, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) released the results of a survey in which it found that most American Jews accept marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

In the survey, a majority of respondents said that they did not oppose interfaith marriage. Forty percent said they were neutral about such unions, and 16 percent said they regarded interfaith marriage as “a positive good.” Only 12 percent said they strongly disapproved of interfaith marriages.

In a further measure of opinions on the issue, 56 percent said they disagreed with the statement, “It would pain me if mychild married a Gentile,” and 80 percent said they agreed that “intermarriage is inevitable in an open society.” Fifty percent said it was “racist” to oppose marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Fewer than one in four respondents said a rabbi should refuse to officiate at such marriages.

The AJC’s David Singer said that, “If you look at the data in realistic terms, those people who see mixed marriages as a threat to Jewish continuity and want to maintain the traditional battle against intermarriage, clearly have an uphill fight.”

It took only a few months, however, before the American Jewish Committee launched a campaign to change these increasingly tolerant Jewish attitudes. Stephen Bayme, director of the AJC’s contemporary Jewish life department, said he was stunned at how “benignly” Jews had accepted co-officiation with non-Jewish clergy at wedding ceremonies, which he said indicated a “collapse of norms in the Jewish community.” His goal, he declared, is “to guide the climate of opinion” on the importance of marrying within the Jewish faith.

This position has been repudiated by the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans. Professors Cohen and Eisen found that “virtually none of our respondents articulated an unambiguous commitment to endogamy. That had been their parents’ Jewish way, one which they have decisively rejected. Our respondents’ range of views regarding intermarriage stands in contrast with their parents’ largely unequivocal opposition…Even here, because we intentionally limited our sample almost entirely to moderately affiliated Jews, the spectrum of views on this matter is somewhat narrower than we would observe in a study of American Jewry as a whole.”

Peter H. Schweitzer, a long-time AJC supporter and the great-grandson of its early leader, Louis Marshall, says that he is “pained” by the AJC’s campaign against intermarriage: “The AJC has expressed great disregard for the majority of its members who have shown their responsible tolerance of intermarriage. By launching its ‘Jews should marry Jews’ drive, the leaders of AJC have ignored the voice of its membership and, moreover, have missed an opportunity to reach out to intermarried couples, who, in effect, they condemn instead…Louis Marshall defended and championed the rights of all minorities…It is time to show the same respect and tolerance to those Jews who intermarry, including some of Marshall’s own descendants….Intermarriage is not a curse. It can be a wonderful thing for many people and their families. In the congregation to which I belong, we do not shun these families or make them pass any litmus tests. Rather, we greet them with open arms…For us, the higher value is inclusiveness and respect, not chauvinism and bigotry.”

It is clear that national Jewish organizations which make pronouncements on behalf of Israel, in opposition to intermarriage and a host of other subjects do not speak for the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans.

Unfortunately, such groups continue to pretend that Jewish opinion is “unified” and go to great lengths to silence those who would disagree. Elie Wiesel, for example, used his talk to AIPAC’s national conference in March to excoriate “self-hating Jews” and labeled as “anti-Semitism” views he said were disguised as “anti-Zionist or cheap universalism.”

Sadly, Wiesel, who suffered under the Nazis, has little sympathy for the suffering of the Palestinians. This is moral myopia of the most extreme kind.

Fortunately, most American Jews do not share such feelings, and efforts to silence them are as futile as efforts to impose a fictional “unity” on a community that persists in thinking for itself.

Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.

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