We Are Still One: An Open Letter to an Israeli Friend on the Issues That Divide Us

EIZENSTAT, STUART E.

We Are Still One An Open Letter to an Israeli Friend on the Issues that Divide Us STUARTLEJZEHSTAT Stuart EUenstal and Dan Halperin are close friends and tennis partners. They met ten years ago,...

...I believe one of the motivating factors behind Rabbi Neusner's article was the understandable alienation a Conservative American rabbi can feel when the form of Judaism he has practiced freely in the United States is denigrated in Israel...
...When the "going got tough," Avineri stated, ' 'your [American Jewish] leaders reacted like trembling Israelites in the shletl, not like the proud and mighty citizens of a free democratic society...
...government to lobby against them, even while the foreign minister's emissaries were trying to convince our government to back the plan...
...It serves no useful purpose to denigrate American Jews as having a galut mentality...
...Indeed, I believe we are in danger of the most serious polarization since the founding of the State...
...There is a peace treaty with Egypt that has held together under difficult circumstances, a de facto peace with Jordan, a better protected though still troubled Lebanese border, and a recent Russian pullback in the quantity of sophisticated arms to Syria...
...we are good French patriots," or Jewish leaders in Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser or in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini who ' 'ran for cover when members of their respective Jewish communities were caught spying for Israel...
...While the 1987 session of the Knesset fortunately defeated this effort, it is deleterious to American Jewish-Israeli relations that the head of the Israeli government would himself endorse a change in the Law of Return...
...As Israel becomes a country with a Sephardic majority, whose leaders—properly so—will increasingly be drawn from families from North African and Arab countries, a new generation of Israeli leaders will arise who may understand the United States and American Jews less well than the current leadership, and who may not be fluent in English...
...We are imperfect because we have not made aliyah and built a Jewish state with them...
...But we also need an action agenda in which we work as partners together on our mutual problems...
...The way in which you in Israel live out your lives in a Jewish state will have a profound effect on the future of Judaism, in America in general and on my children in particular...
...Last March, remarks by two brilliant and learned Jewish scholars exemplified the problem...
...Another way for me to say this to you is that, at best, American Jews have largely a one-dimensional, charitable, sentimental relationship with Israel, seen abstractly as a homeland for other Jews in distress...
...I view Zionism like the steps of Jacob's ladder pointing to heaven...
...Let me enumerate a few examples of how each of the two great remaining Jewish centers in our post-Holocaust world have failed to do all they should to support each other...
...Over the four decades of Israel's life, the intermarriage rate in the United States has soared from under 10 percent to over 33 percent...
...We cannot be one people when the forms of Judaism practiced by the majority of American Jews are disenfranchised in the Jewish homeland itself...
...Fewer U.S...
...can Jews and our experience with pluralism...
...For a significant minority of American Jews, Israel has become a central feature of our lives, a key identification point with our religion, the focal point of Jewish organizational life...
...To compare the quality of Jewish life in Jerusalem with that in Los Angeles or Houston or Kansas City is ridiculous...
...dentists and doctors and social workers can work in deprived neighborhoods...
...America is...
...In today's world one can be a pianist without physically being in %ion, if one's heart, soul and commitment are there...
...There is a spark of truth in what each said, but each is fundamentally wrong...
...But it is not only these two articles by prominent and thoughtful Jews—one American and one Israeli-that bother me...
...We win some and we lose some—and some are rained out...
...The second-class status of Reform and Conservative rabbis in Israel is truly lamentable...
...The Torah tells us that in the jubilee year in ancient Israel we are to "proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof...
...Third, we American Jews must change from passive bystanders to active participants in Israel's life and struggles, from check writers of charily to engaged partners...
...The affair deeply angered middle-level career bureaucrats in the Pentagon and in U.S...
...The task of American Jews, with the help of Israelis, is to avoid assimilation and to deepen our Jewish identification and our relationship with Israel...
...Among American Jews, Pollard is viewed as a pariah...
...While we annually send over $300 million in charity to Israel via UJA, American Jews invest less than 10 percent of that amount in Israeli industry...
...For all of our integration into the mainstream of American life, we are still a tiny minority and, of course, minorities must always be concerned...
...We cannot rebuild the bridges between American Jewry and Israelis when many Jews in America are made to feel their forms of Judaism We cannot rebuild the bridges when many Jews in America are made to feel their forms of Judaism are inferior...
...But this time I am really worried...
...Anti-Semitism has dropped so precipitously in the past 20 years— confirmed by recent polls—that almost all of the old barriers have fallen...
...This hardly comports with Rabbi Neusner's contention that Jews are not assimilating in America...
...Here in the United States, as you know from your own lengthy stay here, Jews have freedom, protection and opportunity we never had outside of Israel in our 3,000-year history—surpassing the Golden Age of Spain...
...The reason: we in America still have a galut—or exile—mentality...
...Let me give you the flavor of what he said: • American Jews overreacted to the Pollard mess, thereby displaying "nervousness, insecurity, and even cringing," belying our contention that we feel ' 'free, secure, and unmolested" in America...
...we have U.S...
...from the business and political success of Ameri...
...We have seen the foreign minister espouse and work assiduously for a peace conference his prime minister opposed...
...Jews now pay special attention to articles about Israel in newspapers or magazines...
...are inferior...
...Israel is not doing all it should to be a beacon to world Jewry: • Even for those who are highly motivated, making aliyah and successfully integrating into Israeli society is more difficult than it should be...
...The poll I mentioned earlier shows that the biggest drop-off of support for Israel is among Reform and secular Jews...
...Jacob Neusner, in The Washington Post, wrote that "It's time to say that America is a better place to be a Jew than Jerusalem...
...So, with all of this good news, why am I so worried...
...Jewish community as a source of money and political support for their positions— and little more—or a nuisance, when, as in the Pollard case, the American Jewish community openly challenged Israeli decisions...
...So, what I am saying, Danny, is that we need both a new state of mind and an action agenda...
...or believe that if Israel were destroyed, they would have suffered one of the greatest personal tragedies of their lives...
...How fitting it is that, as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of our U.S...
...Neusner also fails to appreciate fully the political ramifications of a Jewish state...
...I believe Shlomo Avineri was speaking for many, perhaps most Israelis...
...We were embarrassed and angered by the position the Pollard case put us in, but not fearful for our lives and property...
...We will always be more alert to possible anti-Semitism than the facts may warrant...
...Your Exile is different—comfortable— padded with success and renown...
...I will come back to the Neusner-Avineri articles in a moment...
...Can it be justified morally...
...immigration purposes), the freedom of choice American Jews believe must exist for our Soviet sisters and brothers is denied...
...It is time to take off both our rose-colored and our dark glasses and see Israel as she is: a safe country with a modern infrastructure, a lively democracy and a yearning to be accepted as a nation-state, but a country with very real economic and social problems and real strains on her democracy...
...Democracies, including Israel's, make mistakes...
...American Jews have not adequately recognized the incredible reality of a reborn Jewish state...
...There is also no problem of loss of Jews through assimilation there, as in fact there is in the United States by every measure, Neusner's contention not-' withstanding...
...It is for us to create a new living Zionism, relevant to today's realities...
...There was also a deep concern that the loyalty and patriotism of the American Jewish community might be called into question...
...There is a vast difference between taking satisfaction in the growing acceptance Jews have achieved in the Unites States over the years, the material rewards many in the Jewish community enjoy in America, even the increasingly rich communal and intellectual life of Jews in the United States and contending that this makes America, rather the Israel, our Promised Land...
...The recent call by the American Jewish Congress for an international peace conference created deep resentment in some quarters in Israel...
...Avineri concluded with the following, which hits American Jews at the core: ' 'You in America are no different from French, German, Polish, Soviet and Egyptian Jews...
...So, rather than feeling a closer affinity with Israel over the years, many American Jews feel less of an attachment...
...The Reform and Conservative movements, as well as the Orthodox, have kibbutzim, congregations, youth movements, schools and camping experiences for people of all ages...
...It appears that in the political infighting in Israel over the peace conference, American Jews may become a casualty...
...It is time to stop seeing Israel as a charity case, a weak sibling...
...We are not doing our share to preserve our own religion here...
...bases, troops and missiles that protect Japan, South Korea and Europe—none of which exist to help defend Israel...
...Today, Zionism needs to meld the two concepts...
...That brings me back to my two friends, Jacob Neusner and Shlomo Avineri...
...that] America has turned out to be our Promised Land...
...While American Jews have contributed over $12 billion to the United Jewish Appeal since 1919, of which over $6.5 billion went directly to Israel, UJA raises no more today than in 1974, and in inflation-adjusted terms no more than in 1948...
...Suffice it to say now that each has taken a kernel of truth and blown it out of all proportion to reality...
...We still see ourselves, he believes, as "aliens," as vulnerable as Soviet or Iranian Jews...
...The centrality of Israel in Jewish life must be recognized by American Jews, but it also places a commensurate responsibility upon Israelis...
...He belittled those Israelis who argue that American Jews are anti-Zionist if they try to maintain "their distinctive community and faith" outside Israel...
...But by deepening our involvement in Israel, we advance up the rungs of that ladder and give meaning to a new Zionism...
...The U.S...
...The prime minister, in turn, openly hoped the foreign minister's efforts would fail and sent emissaries to the U.S...
...Today there are more opportunities than ever to enhance the quality of life in Israel: • For our teenagers, there are semester-long and 11th- and 12th-grade school programs at Israeli kibbutzim, summer camp experiences and youth assemblies...
...Today, too many American Jews have swung to the other extreme, and see Israel darkly in an equally unrealistic stereotype as a nation besieged and overwhelmed by terrorism and tormented by insurmountable problems...
...only one-third of our youngsters receive any type of Jewish education, compared to two-thirds who did 25 years ago...
...For older adults and senior citizens, there are exciting volunteer projects that permit work in their field of choice, or even on army bases...
...This lightning bolt from the American Jewish side was matched by one from the Israeli side...
...consider themselves Zionists...
...Your government correctly believes that it is only the existence of Israel and an Israeli visa that permits a Jew to leave the Soviet Union...
...From the Israeli side I am not sure things are that much better...
...It is exile nonetheless...
...Israelis are more secure than at any time since 1948—even considering a belligerent Syria...
...It is time that we defined a new relationship between Israel and American Jewry...
...I know Jews are always worried, even when there is no reason...
...The other is Shlomo Avineri, who, as you know, was director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, is now Israel's preeminent political scientist at Hebrew University and has probably spent as much or more time in the United States as Jacob Neusner has spent in Israel...
...intelligence agencies...
...The political Zionism of Theodore Herzl in the late 19th century, which arose from his coverage of the Dreyfus trial, was based on the notion that Jews would never be successfully assimilated into Western society...
...The United States spends over S100 billion on NATO...
...only a Jewish state could protect Jews...
...And still, when Americans were asked in a major poll which organizations and groups had too much power in America, Jews ranked near the bottom with the Catholic church, and below big business, labor unions and even blacks...
...The Promised Land is not in Borough Park or Queens, it is Israel and Jerusalem (together with Torah) that helped hold Jews together through the ages with history's most powerful and long-standing dream—a return to Zion...
...American Jews can establish executive exchange programs and can get their states to create joint economic enterprises with the state of Israel, modeled after the Texas-Israel Exchange and the Virginia-Israel Commission...
...The prime minister, to stave off new elections, promised Rabbi Shach of the Shas Party that Orthodox rabbinical courts will be given additional powers over identification of Jews making aliyah so that an Orthodox reconversion will be required of Reform and Conservative converts...
...Indeed, respectable voices, including the deputy defense minister, now openly talk of resettling the Arabs from the West Bank, a chilling prospect in light of Jewish history...
...Now that this has happened in our lifetime, we should not negate the historical importance of the land for which we have so long yearned...
...Jews to the Pollard affair...
...The only place in 2,000 years where Jews have had real political power—control over our own destiny—is in Israel...
...The Conservative movement in the United States retaliated by denying their synagogue pulpits to members of the Knesset who support amending the Law of Return...
...We have tended to see Israel either through rose-colored glasses, on the one hand, or dark glasses, on the other...
...America, it now appears, may not be your Promised Land...
...A recent survey, published in 1987 for the Institute on American Jewish-Israeli Relations of the American Jewish Committee (which I chaired for four years), showed an erosion in levels of American'Jewish attachment to Israel, with an even more severe decline among younger adults, compared to earlier surveys in 1981 and 1983...
...Each is a personal friend and a world-class intellect...
...For short-term political gain, they must not create disunity in Jewish ranks...
...American Jews have largely a one-dimensional, charitable, sentimental relationship with Israel...
...Yet for every abuse, whether in Lebanon or in Israel, the fiercely independent Israeli courts and press, or special commissions and investigations, assure at least some accountability, even if imperfect (as in the investigations into the Pollard affair...
...Here we Americans can bring our longer democratic experience to bear to help Israel more completely develop its institutions for accountability...
...Moreover, the Soviet Union is gradually moving toward restoration of diplomatic relations with Israel, hostile Arab regimes are now far more concerned with the threat of Iranian fundamentalism than with Israel...
...government gave Israel ten times more than American Jews contributed to Israel last year...
...Israel must stand for the unity of the Jewish people everywhere—and certainly in Israel...
...No distinction was made between secular and religious Jews during the Holocaust...
...In the early years of the State, we saw Israel through the artificial stereotype of happy kibbutzniks dancing the night away around bonfires as they pioneered a new country...
...We are too frequently acting contrary to each other's welfare and both sides are equally responsible for the resulting tensions...
...They met ten years ago, when Ei&nstai ivas chief domestic policy advisor in the White House, and Halperm was the economic minister at the Israeli Embasiy in Washington, D.C, A tthough Halperin is now back in Jerusalem working as an economic consultant to Israeli businesses, they correspond regularly...
...If this requires a major reform of Israel's electoral system, so be it...
...But when Israelis object to their coming first to the United States and insist they come initially to Israel (where they would lose their status as refugees for U.S...
...feel that caring about Israel is a very important part of their being Jews...
...Israel normally considers how its actions affect Jews around the world...
...As we approach the 40th anniversary of Israel's independence, American Jews and Israelis understand each other no better than we did at the rebirth of the State in 1948...
...There are regular efforts to amend the Law of Return to exclude those converted to Judaism by non-Orthodox rabbis from automatic Israeli citizenship...
...The real challenge is accountability for these mistakes...
...But it is no denigration of our great country to believe that Israel remains our motherland, our spiritual center, the place of our roots and heritage...
...Here it did not...
...Constitution, this ancient Jewish declaration from Leviticus is inscribed on the Liberty Bell...
...But all of this pales in comparison to the damage done to relations between American Jewry and Israel over the status of non-Orthodox Jews...
...The United States of America is the most remarkable country in world history...
...The two major political groups, the Likud and the Labor alignment, cannot play politics with religious practice...
...Israel is a homeland for all Jews...
...One can be a Zionist without physically being in Zion, if one's heart, soul and commitment are there...
...talk about Israel to friends and relatives...
...We are all one people, with one common fate...
...For better or worse, it is now self-evident after almost 40 years of Israeli independence that the vast majority of American Jews intend to remain in the country that has been so good to them...
...Rather, Avineri said, we are really no different from French Jews in the 19th century during the 'Dreyfus trial who distanced themselves from the unjustly accused Dreyfus by saying, "He is guilty—we are not...
...For young adults, there is a new Jewish Service Corps...
...There is no state-sanctioned anti-Semitism and little intermarriage in Israel...
...A Jew reaches the top rung by living in Israel—the most complete form of Zionist commitment...
...For business people, Project Independence will help link them with their Israeli counterparts in a joint venture or marketing arrangement...
...Dan Halperin Hapalmach Street Jerusalem, Israel Dear Danny, I am worried...
...It is time to end the rancor, to close ranks, to work shoulder to shoulder...
...Neusner correctly points up the wonderful life we Jews in America can have, but incorrectly does so at the expense of denigrating Jewish life in Israel...
...A variety of American Jewish leaders and organizations insisted they were concerned with the Pollard matter only because it made it more difficult for them to make the case for Israel in the councils of American government...
...We have been at best mere interested bystanders and sideline cheerleaders as Israel pulled itself from the economic abyss of triple-digit inflation...
...We need a state of mind in which we recognize Israel's centrality while respecting Jewish life outside Israel as normal and healthy...
...Far from being a truly independent Jewish state for the first time in 2,000 years, Neusner asserted, Israel is a mere "client state" which "depends upon a generous America...
...In our morning (Shachant) service we pray that God will "bring us safely from the four corners of the earth, and lead us in dignity to our holy land...
...So where does that leave us, Danny...
...We read with dismay in our newspapers about the official Israeli inquiry regarding the Shin Bet, Israel's crucially important internal security service, which found that security agents regularly lied to Israel's courts over 16 years tojrelp secure the conviction of suspected terrorists...
...My friend Shlomo Avineri has berated American Jews in caustic terms over our reaction to the Pollard spy affair...
...Jewish life in a Jewish state is special and unique...
...World Jewry, he contended ' 'has voted with its feet," whether Algerian or Russian Jews who left their native land but chose, by and large, to live in the West rather than in Israel, or Israelis themselves who have flocked to America in such numbers that ' 'more Israelis live in the United States than in Jerusalem...
...What bothers me is that even though Jews in Israel and Jews in the United States are better able than ever to handle our ancient and traditional enemies, we are faced with an inability to handle our own relationship...
...Jews are not assimilating in America and have established an ' 'authentically Jewish voice" and life here...
...The continuing division in the Israeli government over the international peace conference only serves to underscore the impasse that exists in Israel...
...American Jews look with profound sadness at the difficulty Israel is having in defining its own destiny, at its inability to reach a consensus on its ultimate boundaries and on the disposition of the one million Palestinians living under its control...
...Ahad Ha'Am saw Zionism differently—not as a movement to create a modern Jewish state, but rather Israel as a Jewish spiritual center...
...And, after two millennia, it happened in our lifetime...
...And relations between the United States and Israel, even after the Jonathan Jay Pollard incident, are better than in any previous administration, Republican or Democrat, and strategic cooperation has reached an unprecedented level...
...Just as we American Jews have failed to do our part to sustain Israel, so too fault lies on the other side...
...These facts, together with the strength of Israel's own army and the unprecedented backing of the United States, are reassuring...
...We are a resource to be used, not cherished...
...The increasingly bitter dispute within Israel between secular and Orthodox has spilled over to the United States...
...In fact, another poll showed that more Americans would vote for a Jew for president than for a woman...
...That has happened to Jews in America...
...The absence of consensus in Israel has created a vacuum into which the American Jewish community will enter...
...system of government...
...We need a frame of reference in which Jews the world over draw inspiration from one another: from the strength, brashness and sacrifice of Israelis who are giving daily meaning to history's Third Jewish Commonwealth...
...In case you missed it because of your travels, Avineri wrote a now-famous letter to "an American Jewish friend" in The Jerusalem Post at about the same time as Neusner's piece, although not in response to it...
...Your pain is our pain, your difficulties ours too, and your solutions are ones in which we can participate...
...I am not worried because of the traditional security concerns about Israel's survival and security, nor about the fate of American Jews because of the old problem of anti-Semitism...
...Second, as we recognize Israel's uniqueness and centrality, Israelis should accept the legitimacy of the American Jewish experience...
...from the courage and commitment of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews striving for freedom to practice their religion or return to the Promised Land...
...Using an American Jew for this dirty business and then promoting his two handlers contravened your own principles for covert operations...
...When we stop expecting the ideal of Israel, which no nation-state can reach in an imperfect world, we can better appreciate how well Israel has done under pressures and conditions no other country must face and understand how we can help her strengthen a democracy that lacks many of the checks and balances of the U.S...
...The most authentic Jewish life is in Israel, not in the United States...
...Jews in Congress represent states and districts with tiny Jewish populations...
...voluntary contributions were collected for him...
...No one can compare the sense of Jewishness one feels in Israel with anything in the States...
...Interestingly, a CBS/New York Times poll conducted after the Pollard sentencing showed no increase in anti-Semitism in America...
...I have heard people say it is harder for American Jews to get security clearances for certain sensitive positions...
...and our birthrate has declined so drastically that we are at zero population growth, a declining percentage of a growing America...
...Fourth, an essential ingredient of a new and healthier relationship between American Jews and Israelis is equality of all Jews in Israel, regardless of their religious practice...
...Professor Sidney Goldstein of Brown University, in studies presented at the World Jewish Population Conference in Jerusalem in October 1987, found intermarriage rising, conversions by the non-Jewish spouse to Judaism dramatically dropping, and fewer children of mixed marriages raised as Jews...
...American Jews, he contended, see Pollard as elevating the "dual loyalty" issue even though non-Jews do not seem bothered...
...Jews are in America's best colleges and universities in unprecedented numbers"and quotas have been eliminated in graduate and professional schools...
...In today's world, no nation, including the United States, is totally independent, an island unto itself...
...While the Holocaust is a painful reminder of the accuracy of Herzl's vision, I am hard pressed to agree with it in today's post-Holocaust era...
...For 2,000 years, since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E., Jews in exile have longed to return to Israel...
...American Jews and Israelis are in danger of the most serious polarization since the founding of the State...
...One is an American, Jacob Neusner, a Conservative rabbi, a professor of Judaic studies at Brown University and a distinguished scholar and prolific writer who has been to Israel many times...
...He went on to say that: • Jews feel safer and more secure in the United States than in Israel...
...Danny, you and I as Jews in Israel and America have a historical imperative to help bind the lives of our respective communities closer together...
...B1 Your friend...
...Indeed, Pollard has become a Jewish hero to many Israelis, who see him as risking his own security for the Jewish state...
...As parents we can make aliyah an acceptable alternative for our children...
...Since 1948, only 75,000 American Jews have settled in Israel permanently, while aliyah remains at a stagnant level of around 2,500 annually...
...We prayed "Next Year in Jerusalem...
...Divisive political questions have been raised on sensitive matters like Israel's ill-fated tilt toward Iran, its involvement in the Iranian arms sales, and the fate of Soviet Jewry...
...Indeed, more Americans, according to one poll, thought Pollard was spying for the Soviet Union than believed he was spying for Israel...
...Jews are organized politically in ways not imagined only a few years ago—there are over 70 Jewish political action committees, and Jews are no longer silent as we were during World War II while the Holocaust was being perpetrated...
...The possibility of misunderstanding on both sides grows...
...In the past, some Israeli political leaders seemed to see the U.S...
...Yet— • Less than one-third of American Jews have visited Israel even once...
...We Jews in America have political influence but not power, for we must constantly exercise that influence against other groups—business interests, governmental bureaucracies, Arab nations—which likewise seek to influence America's political leaders...
...with wise leaders whose every decision bespoke the wisdom of the ages and reflected Jewish values in an otherwise cruel world...
...with an impregnable army that won every battle...
...Let me outline what the elements of this new Zionism should be: First, the principal imperative must be the unity, interdependence and survival of Jews and Judaism the world over, with Israel as the epicenter of Jewish life to help assure these goals...
...Because we know from history that the only certain protection Jews have comes from each other...
...Israel does not even provide ' 'religious freedom for Jews " So my friend Jacob Neusner berated those Israelis who maintain that true Zionism requires living in Israel...
...So, too, Avineri made a valid point—but carried it far from reality—in describing the reaction of U.S...
...Certainly, Israel is heavily dependent upon the United States, but so are much of Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and many other nations...
...The Pollard affair exposed a tragic insensitivity to the implications of spying on your chief supporter and ally, but, also, Danny, to its implications for American Jewry...
...But Avineri is wrong to use the understandable concerns of a minority, however well protected, to denigrate the authenticity of Jewish life in America or to suggest that Jews here feel as vulnerable as Jews in Egypt, the USSR or 19th-century France...
...But what has been our reaction...
...The rise of Meir Kahane is but one symbol of what happens when a political vacuum exists...
...The monopoly over religious matters Ben-Gurion gave to the Orthodox rabbinate, as a necessary ingredient to unite Israel during its War of Independence, threatens to divide American Jews from Israel...
...For adults, Project Renewal can involve us in meaningful ties with poor Israeli neighborhoods...
...Could the benefit of what was undoubtedly useful intelligence information provided by Pollard conceivably have outweighed the costs...
...Israel, on the other hand, Neusner said, has not lived up to its promise, is not a spiritual center for the Jewish people, and is not the center of Jewish scholarship, literature and art...
...Indeed, it was an Israeli government sponsored investigation that recently brought to light the misdeeds of the Shin Bet...
...Frankly, this is too easy an answer...

Vol. 12 • January 1988 • No. 10


 
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