Jewish Power
Polner, Murray
YES & NO Jewish Power Inside the American Jewish Establishment J. J. Goldberg Addison-Wesley, $25,422 pp. Murray Polner American Jews are doing quite well, thank you. In fact, we are doing...
...Still, they purport to speak for the community as a whole even though the vast majority of Jews have no idea of or even interest in what the organizations are up to in their name...
...This shibboleth often leads those concerned to send their teen-agers to Israel for two weeks rather than, say, more generously funding Jewish religious schools...
...The Jewish community remains essentially liberal and moderate in political opinion...
...According to some American Jewish organizations, American Jews are in a state of crisis...
...Most Jews identify their religion with ethical and moral behavior rather than ritual observance or participation in synagogue...
...There is indeed Jewish "power," but it is a force competing, and often cooperating, with other "special interests" of every size and ideology...
...Nor have the vast majority of Jews welcomed the small but influential number of Jewish neoconservatives...
...The Israelis, though, blamed their own leaders...
...Goldberg criticizes the general timidity of mainstream groups, and especially "the inability of the Jewish leadership to repudiate the anti-civil rights crusade" of some Jewish neoconservatives...
...For years, many organizations automatically supported anything Israel did and often unjustly smeared critics of Israeli policy, Jewish and non-Jewish alike...
...In one well-known incident, Jewish Organizations widely castigated the media for their reporting on the invasion of Lebanon in 1982...
...Yes, many Jews work in Hollywood and within the nation's great news-gathering organizations...
...It does and it doesn't...
...Hollywood and the media attract a lot of Jews, but it is virtually impossible to detect any systematic pro-Jewish bias...
...Neither diplomatic nor apologetic nor an expose, Jewish Power is a candid, shrewd, and constructive examination of these questions from "inside (and outside, too) the American Jewish establishment," where Jews are as divided among themselves as any other group...
...That crisis is principally linked to religious intermarriage, which, it is argued, threatens "Jewish continuity...
...It is far simpler to damn the outrageous Farrakhan than to confront Jewish zealots in their own midst who cursed and vilified Rabin and Peres for negotiating a settlement with Palestinians...
...Goldberg also has interesting things to say about the so-called Jewish control of the media...
...At the same time, many non-Jews fantasize that Jews have it all-especially that Jews somehow "control" the media, Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington...
...As a consequence, the media are still viewed by many as hostile to Israel...
...American Jews generally believe they now have some degree of influence on the larger culture, but know it is much less than many non-Jews might imagine...
...Predictably, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations offered only limited public support for the Rabin-Peres peace process...
...Ignorance increases suspicion...
...But most Jews "drew back a respectful distance" since Israel wasn't "their highest priority," and "looked elsewhere for expression of their own values...
...To what extent does the undoubted success of Jews translate into power...
...That reticence, Goldberg insists, is one of the reasons "why the power of the Jewish establishment remains such a mystery to Americans, both Jewish and non-Jewish...
...J. J. Goldberg, an American who writes for the Jerusalem Report, is one of the rare Jewish insiders to deal openly with this hypersensitive subject...
...Still, a tragic history and bureaucratic inertia have today led many Jewish organizations and leaders to minimize these manifest truths, lest they be forced to address more vexing and internally contentious questions...
...But, as Goldberg points out, most American Jews are not so alarmist, and embrace the open society from which they and their children have reaped so many blessings...
...Moreover, public anti-Semitism has largely disappeared, and the open pursuit of Jewish interests in the political arena is now a fact of life...
...Not surprisingly, they are reflexively American and do not believe Israel is where they should live or that by choosing America they are living in religious "exile...
...A "striking parallel" exists, Goldberg writes, between the Jewish refusal to criticize other Jews and black leaders who have not disavowed "anti-Israel radicals in the black community...
...Goldberg writes that even centrist organizations-except the ADL-"were hesitant to offer Rabin the same wholehearted support they had once given Begin and Shamir...
...Pluralism and tolerance remain the bywords...
...That's called democracy...
...Others still promote anxieties about anti-Semitism, and encourage a circle-the-wagons mentality...
...Jewish donations to politicians and PACs can make a difference, but favored candidates and proposed legislation lose as well as win...
...Goldberg argues, correctly in my view, that after the 1967 Six-Day War, "a small minority of Jews had been allowed to take over the Jewish organizational infrastructure and turn it into an instrument of defensive nationalism...
...In fact, we are doing infinitely better in this country than we have in any other place we have ever lived...
...Today, a good many American Jewish organizations are controlled by an aging generation-some actually have no membership at all...
...From anarchist to Zionist, and from secular universalist humanists to those pursuing cultural, nationalist, and religious agendas, American Jews are hardly a monolithic group...
...We tend to earn comfortable incomes, we have a passion for education, and our religious and secular contributions to American society are unmatched anywhere (including Israel...
...But "for all the influence that Jewish individuals wield in the American media...the media remain remarkably uninterested in exploring the Jewish community...
...Jewish-oriented newspapers and magazines do cover what happens inside the Jewish community, but, with infrequent exceptions, it is a kept press, replete with "worshipful accounts of Israeli prowess," and afraid to offend sponsors and organizations...
Vol. 124 • January 1997 • No. 1
