JOURNAL ENTRY

...Would AIPAC and the rest of the Israel Lobby wither away—and with it Jewish influence in Congress...

...aid to build those settlements...

...The ambassador's boast is precisely the problem...

...Am I an assimilationist because I agree with the Bush Administration (on this point at least) that Israel is acting stupidly if not illegally in using U.S...

...It is a curious turn of events for a people with an age-old reputation for openness and analysis...

...From a rabbi who was quick to extend congratulations for the thoughtfulness and timeliness of my other pieces, I now receive perfunctory greetings...

...But I think the greater problem, as such Jewish scholars as Arthur Hertzberg have observed, is that Israel has finally become a surrogate religion for American Jews—even as our lack of spirituality has seen attendance at synagogues sink to an all-time low...

...my article was the straw that broke the back of the magazine's once liberal pubRobert Spew, a free-la 'ce writer, lives in Great Neck, New York...

...Jewish gays and lesbians...

...American Jews faulting this thesis might ponder what would happen to them and their institutions if their dream came true: Jordan became the Palestinian state, Palestinians living on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip moved en masse to Jordan, and for good measure the Arab League dropped its boycott of companies that do business with Israel...

...An Israeli neighbor, who apparently has no plans to give up the comforts of the United States, seems particularly exercised that I would write about his country in that way...

...The lack of a substantive Jewish life in America...

...Or, God forbid, less-than-affluent Jews...

...There is nothing more important than the unity of the Jewish people...

...We are all one," Zalman Shoval, the current Israeli ambassador to the United States told a New York Times reporter last May...

...Almost two years after the article appeared, a member of my synagogue, who was full of praise for my other articles on Jewish subjects, pretends not to know me when we find ourselves in the same store...

...He needn't have bothered...

...For without the diversity of Jewish thought, without the unfettered exchange of Jewish ideas no matter how of-fensive they may seem to some— particularly if they are about the future of Israel—we American Jews will be reduced to a shell of our former selves...

...I am all these things and more in the eyes of the self-anointed "leaders" of what they euphemistically call the American Jewish Community...

...The rising tide of Jewish elderly and their burgeoning mental-health problems...

...However, I was not prepared for the intensity of the anger, vehemence, and outright hysteria that came not only from the so-called leaders, but from strangers and friends as well...

...As time went on, I discovered that labels carelessly broadcast take on a permanence all their own...

...Without Israel, what Jewish questions would American Jews discuss...

...The predicament of single Jewish parents and their children...

...I am not hurt by the wrath of the Jewish Establishment and its knee-jerk followers, but I am concerned about the growing intolerance of many American Jews on a variety of issues, not the least of which is self-scrutiny...

...Am I a supplier of grist for the hate mills of the anti-Semites because I no longer can stomach reading about new Israeli settlements on occupied land, because I am offended by the prime minister and his tough-talking cohorts, because I am disgusted by the mealy-mouthed responses of Shimon Peres or some other Israeli La-borite...

...journal entry Robert Spero Bucking the Jewish Establishment Am I, an American Jewish dove who believes Israel is entitled to true security, a self-hating Jew when I publicly criticize Israel's reactionary policies...

...One caller, barely able to contain her outrage, assumed that I would never have written such vile things if I had visited Israel...

...What would happen to Jewish organizations, already financially strapped, if they could not use Israel's security as a calculated fund-raising device...

...Perhaps, as we have kept the memory of the Holocaust alive, we have become too cursed by its ghosts...

...The charges were standard but their fury was startling...

...How, in a land where Jews have never been freer and more successful, could we have become so hesitant—or afraid—to speak our minds...

...She was not mollified when I told her I had visited twice...

...Seething from the moment we were introduced, he went on to lecture me for an hour on what amounted to my de-viousness as a Jew and my shortcomings as a human being...

...The Establishment was not pleased to see in print such questions as, "Who can say that the Middle East crisis might have been at least partially remedied if the presidents' conference had truly reflected the views of most American Jews and withheld its support of Israel's hard-line policy...

...I was described by another letter-writer as a "Christianized Jew," and by another as an "Israel-basher...

...Any public criticism of Israel by an American Jew is regarded as an act of treachery by the Jewish Establishment...

...Am I a turncoat because I wonder about the Israelis and Jewish armchair generals in America who bask in the past victories of the Israel Defense Forces when it is so obvious that a socioeconomic cancer is killing the Jewish state more surely than any Arab terrorist...

...Callers to a public radio station on which I appeared in connection with the article denounced me for "giving aid and comfort to the Arabs and gentiles...

...A radio talk show recruited a senior official from the presidents' conference to debate me...

...So I knew they would pin the self-hate label on me the moment my investigative article on the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (the leading spokesman for American Jews whether they like it or not) appeared in the now defunct magazine Present Tense...

...The bleak state of Jewish education...

...One furious reader wrote to Present Tense that people like me were the real cancer in Jewish life—and canceled his subscription...

...lisher, the American Jewish Committee, which suddenly closed it down after seventeen years...