‘No Jewish People without Israel’: Daniel Gordis’ Excellent Essay
Why do American Jews lie at the Passover seder when they pledge “Next Year in Jerusalem”? So asks author and Jewish scholar Daniel Gordis, as he provocatively begins a recent essay in Tablet Magazine grimly titled “No Jewish People Without Israel.” Surely few American Jews actually mean their Passover oath, he acknowledges. Instead he informs the reader of the meaning of the ubiquitous expression:
“Next year in Jerusalem” is not about a plan, but about a dream. And uttering this phrase has long been the Jewish people’s way of keeping in mind both an ethereal ideal and a common national yearning. … For two millennia, as Jews imagined their people’s future, one place occupied center-stage. That place was Zion.
With this reminder, Gordis begins a cogent, persuasive, and utterly compelling admonishment to American Jews — particularly my fellow younger cohorts — that American Jewry depends on nothing less than the survival and success of the modern state of Israel.
Gordis’ polemic does not come arbitrarily. He cites recent surveys, including one comprehensive 2007 study where American Jews were asked if the destruction of Israel would be a personal tragedy for them (not the weakening or “slow withering away,” but actually eradication). The results reveal a nightmarish scenario for aging Jewish elders who rejoiced at Israel’s birth in 1948. Eighty percent of American Jews 65 years old and older answered affirmatively, while the rate decreased dramatically as respondent ages lowered. For those 35 and under, the answer was a coin flip at fifty percent.
Gordis explains the source of the disenchantment with Israel among younger American Jews. The obvious, while wholly misguided, is political. American Jews have a growing unease with the unceasing Palestinian conflict, resulting in, as Gordis explains, “an oral Rorschach test in response to the word ‘Israel’ evok[ing] responses such as ‘checkpoints,’ ‘occupation,’ or ‘settlements’ — as though the conflict were all that Israel is about.” Indeed, the aforementioned survey revealed over 40% of American Jews under 35 agreed that “Israel occupies land belonging to someone else,” and over 30% reported sometimes feeling “ashamed” of Israel’s actions.
One other reason has more to do, ironically, with Jewish success and assimilation in America. Gordis explains:
Many of these younger Jews now also believe they simply do not need Israel any longer. Having matured in the Shoah’s long shadow, their parents and grandparents still perhaps feel marginally vulnerable in America. These young people do not. They feel safe and do not fear anti-Semitism. Why, they therefore ask themselves, express fealty to a country they do not need and that often makes them feel ashamed?
In response, Gordis provides a rudimentary history lesson of false safe-havens for the Jewish people, suggesting that our “newfound confidence has historical antecedents.” The Jewish people flourished in Spain and Germany before Inquisition and Nazism, respectively, threatened their survival. These are only two examples of many.
As an American Jew who moved to Israel, I can testify that my American Jewish relatives back in the U.S. would be absolutely impervious to and uninterested in Gordis’s article at best, if not offended by it and by the fact that I sent it to them.
You have put it best, it is exactly this the point. Same thing if I would send the article to most of my European friends and relatives. I’m a west European which left Europe long ago to reside in Israel. Shana Tova.
Four more years of Obama and Israel will see plenty of Aliyah from the USA.
So the US Jews will leave America because of fear and hardship under the Obama regime, and not because of love for Israel. Probably history will force the Jews outside Israel to come back. (I hope they won’t vote for the left in droves…but I guess when that time comes, all political parties will be moot…). Shana Tova.
It seems from current happenings that 4 more years of Obama is likely to see Israelis fleeing for their lives.
The Baal Shem Tov was orphaned from his father, the hidden tzaddik Rabbi Eliezer, at the age of five. The last words spoken to him by his holy father before his passing were: “Yisrolik, fear nothing but G‑d alone. Love every single Jew, without exception, with the full depth of your heart and with the fire of your soul, no matter who he is or how he behaves.
Noam Chomsky? Neve Gordon? Norman Finkelstein? Jacqueline Rose? Naomi Klein? ‘Fraid I’m not up to it. As to more garden-variety American Jewish left-liberals who are planning to vote for Obama–love them with the fire of my soul?…well, don’t think so.
So, if you had a child, or a family member, who developed tendencies that were criminal, self-destructive, or just plain stupid, G-d forbid, you really wouldn’t love them anymore?
Love doesn’t necessarily mean you approve of their behavior, respect their choices, or even like them -
A family is joined together like the parts of a single body. When one part of the body is hurt the whole body is hurt, when one part of the body improves the whole body improves.
Just like with family, amputating a limb of the body is only the last most desperate resort to prevent a terminal condition from killing the whole body. A person generally will tolerate a severe limp rather than amputate a painful leg.
The prophets of the Torah always prayed to prevent divine punishment of the innocent along with the guilty. Especially on Yom Kippur, the Children of Israel pray to G-d help us improve, heal, and to forgive our whole family (including ourselves), which really means praying for the improvement, healing, and forgiveness of all of G-d’s Creation.
If you indeed love Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, I’m afraid I cannot laud you for this. But do you really?
Do I love Dr. Chomsky? Not at all. I’ve never met him, and I doubt he’d give me the time of day.
But if there was an existential danger to Jews in Cambridge MA, and I knew he was in a particular building, I’d go inside to get him to safety. I’m in no way proud of him, but a threat against Jews is as much a threat to him as it is to me. “A poor thing, but mine own.”
And on this eve of Yom Kippur, may all those who observe it have an easy fast and g’mar chatima tova.
Daniel in Brookline
Next year in Israel” is not a promise, it is a wish, a hope and a dream. We live in the real world; we have things that we need to do. Our ambition is that someday we will find a way to move to Israel. In the meantime, we do what we can for Israel wherever we are…
” Next year in Israel” is not a promise, it is a wish, a hope and a dream. ”
It is an opportunity for those who wish to live.
“we do what we can for Israel wherever we are.” I’m sorry, but this is a greatly idealized portrait. Well-known statistics show that about two-thirds of American Jews have never even VISITED Israel. By the way, a much higher percentage of CANADIAN Jews (like British Jews and French Jews) have visited Israel–so you can’t say the geographical distance is the American Jews’ problem. No, the majority of American Jews are just left-liberal Americans who may have been born to a Jewish mother. They’re not the most gung-ho Americans either–as witness their fierce hatred of mainstream America as manifested in public displays of Christianity, conservative politicians, conservative pundits, etc. They loathe the guts of Rush Limbaugh and probably don’t know which party Shimon Peres belongs to, or who he is or what his post is.
You’ve given the correct answer to the US Jews, and I wanted to say more or less the same. Well done. Gmar Chatima Tova
Same to you, chaver.
Am Israel Chai!
Not a Jew but take this analysis for what its worth: most US Jews are on the political Left, and those in the United States who are on the political Left are leftists or liberals (however they choose to identify themselves) before they are anything else and the Left of US political life is equivocal at best toward the existence of Israel. Also there is the issue of abortion, the great fault line of American politics, and most Jews in the United States seem to be inexorably in the camp that supports it (which always has amazed me considering the terrors that reduced respect for human life has generally inflicted on the Jewish people in the history of the Western world) with the pro life side generally occupied by evangelical Christians who are also identified with support for Israel and you have it I think. But then again the State of Israel has few qualms about open access to abortion either, so politics is as usual a mishmash and like I said: take this for what it’s worth
A good Jewish friend, who I’m sure is a fiscal conservative at heart, nevertheless will be voting for o based on social issues alone from what I can tell. Despite sending said friend numerous articles, Friend can’t seem to get past the social component. Religous/cultural/economic suicide?
Sadly accurate.
Our Reform Temple’s fifth graders and sixth graders do a study project including a video conference in the spring with counterparts at an Israeli school and our congregation has a sister congregation in Israel. Camps and youth movements do trips as does Birthright. But these are the committed Jews (of all streams along with Federation connected families). We’re active but our numbers are declining. And we’re not reproducing (like the Europeans).
Barry Rubin’s Israel:an Introduction should be purchased by every American Jewish high school and college kid (and their parents). It tells the story of the real, every day Israel in all its aspects.
If you want your grandchildren to be Jews get your kids out of the ” reform ” movement.
The Democratic party with music
Reform Judaism, it’s better you start understanding the profound meaning of the Torah, (and your kids too) and all the rest. Reforming it, not only puts the Jews outside Judaism, it’s much worse than that. The reform movement will not last long, and what it does to Judaism is “genetic engineering” to create a monster..
Priorities, and mental balance, are needed for good judgment. Better to understand and renounce the Insane Left now, for it is the immediate, and increasing, danger on the slippery slope towards outright tyranny. When you stand before God in the final judgment, He will not see you as a Jew, but as a spirit, a beloved child returned from a strange land… Jews are not the only “strangers in a strange land”, it is the unavoidable condition of human life on Earth, in a material body. Good spiritual judgment while on Earth, not land or other material possession, is every human soul’s greatest goal, and greatest need now.
Netanyahu”s recent exhortations,, incorrectly interpreted as “interference” in US domestic politics, is simply a wake up call to American Jewry that Israel will not be silent in the face of an existential threat. And more importantly, the past will never again be repeated ( i.e. Jewish Democrats cannot repeat Rabbi Wise”s strategy via a via Roosevelt)
We all agree, Reform, Orthodox, or Conservative, that Erez Yirael trumps Tikkun Olom any day of the week. The issue is convincing the rest of the world’s Jews (especially in the US) of this simple fact.
The Torah is number one about the promise of the land of Israel to the Jews. Making the world better is a mitzvah, but its not directly a commandant, is it?
US Jews are a bit too obsessed with social action and making the entire world a better place (Tikkun Olom) that they are forgetting that the politics the vast majority of them support is at clear odds with Erez Yisrael. Take one look at this year’s Dem convention — that should convince anyone. If you have seen Nazi rally movies from the 30s, it felt the same.
What Jew would support the Democrats under these circumstances? I guess you could ask the same of Jews in the early 30s supporting Marshall Hindenburg in the years prior to Hitler. History has a way of repeating itself.
However, leave the Reform-Conservative-Orthodox debate for another day. Nobody has a monopoly on the Torah.
Nobody cared how religious you were as they sent us on the way to the gas chambers, did they?
The problem facing American Jews today is spiritual. Few among the younger generation feel any real connection to Judaism, Eretz Yisroel, or to the Jewish people. In my extended family about half have no Jewish life at all or will not by the next generation.
This is a political blog so things become framed in political terms which misses the point. So with that I will just close with one of my favorite hassidic quotes.
Intolerance lies at the core of evil.
Not the intolerance that results
from any threat or danger.
But intolerance of another being who dares to exist.
Intolerance without cause. It is so deep within us,
because every human being secretly desires
the entire universe to himself.
Our only way out is to learn
compassion without cause. To care for each other
simply because that ‘other’ exists.
- Rabbi Menachem Mendle
——————————————————————————–
It is so deep within us,
because every human being secretly desires
the entire universe to himself
The perfect preamble to the Golden Rule, the reason for it.
“The Jewish people flourished in Spain and Germany before Inquisition and Nazism, respectively, threatened their survival. These are only two examples of many.”
This goyim is a little hurt and insulted by American being compared to Nazi Germany and post-medieval Spain. While the future is always uncertain, I think it is more uncertain in a ten- to twenty-mile by 200-300 mile coastal strip than it is in a continental nation.
The destruction of Israel would cut a huge hole in Christianity as well, since that’s where Christianity was born. If the Muslims should take over the region, they would wipe out every last vestige of Judaism and Christianity, and rewrite the history of the entire region. Jews need to understand why Christians (particularly Evangelicals) are their friends and not their enemies.
That would be End Times scenario.
Our Dear Leader says Israel is “one of” our best friends in the Middle East. I say Israel is our only true friend in the Middle East.
Under this Administration the whole world seems upside down.
Gordis predicts that America may become so antisemitic as to be inhospitable to Jews. He invokes the precedents of Germany and Spain, countries where he says the Jews used to flourish until they became victims of antisemitic policies. But Jews had never been accepted in German society as they are in America: when Hitler came to power they had only enjoyed bare legal equality for a few decades and in spite of fierce popular disapproval. In Spain, the Jews had long been trapped in the middle of a power struggle between Arabs and Christians and were distrusted by both sides. Neither example is relevant to us.
Gordis is right that Israel is a source of nationalist pride for diaspora Jews, one of the most important circumstances about Israel which is much obfuscated in the media.
And yet American Jews vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Never again?
I’m unconvinced.
I say Israel is our only true friend in the Middle East.
Friend, or client and dependent?
How has Israel ever befriended American goyim?
…and while you’re at it, Mr Davenport, what have you ever done for me, and why on earth should I care whether you and yours live or die?
(hint: to save my soul)
By being a island of freedom and democracy in a sea of radical Islamic hate and violence. That alone qualifies Israel as America’s friend, but in addition Israel maintains the only legitimate military force in the Mideast capable and willing to restrain the crazy mullahs.
Client state? I don’t believe that means what you think it does. The radical dictatorships and theocracies in the area were client states of the old Soviet Union. If we had that much power and influence in the area the nutbags would be scared to kill, pillage, and riot in the name of anti-Americanism.
Two questions:
* Why the attack on the Liberty?
* Why Jonathan Pollard?
1) Attack on Liberty happened because of communications errors of both US and Israel. You’ll find enough information on NSA website.
2) Pollard didn’t steal any American secrets. Instead he gave to Israel Iranian,
Iraqi and Syrian WMD secrets, which US collected and under the treaty was obligated to share with Israel, but didn’t.
What are you saying, Mr. Davenport? Would ask that question about any other nationality in the world?
Frankly, Mr. Davenport, there is no rational reason for Israel to befriend you as a Gentile. You, as human being on the other hand, perhaps. You will find that conscious Jews will make it a point not to make anyone an enemy by rioting or demanding respect for their theology or requiring special privileges. It is a matter of reciprocity, like all relationships in this world, from the most intimate to the most superficial.
Mayor Koch? Senator Lieberman? As quiet as a mosque mouse the night before Ramadan.
Adelson, the only Jew who “stood up” is investigated by the IRS. Mayor Koch, Senator Lieberman, as quiet as a mosque mouse the night before Ramadan.
And they blamed the spineless Germans for keeping quiet at Hitler’s gunpoint.
Persecution will never destroy the Jewish people:
Babylonian exile
Roman diaspora
Muslim and Christian persecution
Russian pograms
Nazi Holocaust
They’re still here.
The real question, it seems to me, is whether the Jews can survive American tolerance. Or whether, in a land where they are treated just like everyone else…they become just like everyone else and lose the cultural traits that make them unique.
Genocide couldn’t destroy the Jews…not so sure about assimilation. We’ll see.
Israel does not perform the duties of a sovereign: protect its people. Reading Arutz Sheva daily, I get the feeling the government prefers to see dead Jews rather than taking the initiative to protect them.
Failing to take Judea and Samaria, the state is not geographically secure and thus has trouble getting more people to come, and the place needs people.
The divide is between the religious who want the historic boundaries, and the Marxists who think they can hondel their way to peace.
Well, the current situation reflects a consensus, but it may be very costly in the long term. A truly strong Israel can make its own weather, a weak one will be prey.
I am a first generation American and raised a catholic. My support for Israel has simply been that of supporting a civilized culture against the onslaught of barbarians.
But as I’ve watched politics unfold over these years, I began to question…Why should I support Israel when so many Jews in the US support policies and ideology that seems adverse to state of Israel and in most cases, endangers its very existence?
I am starting to believe that for many Jews, America is their promised land. The prosperity, freedom and security they have here is unprecedented in Jewish existence. So I assume many have decided that the pursuit and maintenance of a true, spiritual and historical Jewish homeland is just a frivolous exercise…and sadly…for most Jews…they view it as bad PR for their lives here in the US.
Regardless, my support of Israel will not waiver for the reason aforemention. If the demise of Israel should come and only then wakes up American Jews to the significance and tragedy of its loss…I will have a difficult time controlling my words and my anger.
Really? I have very little familiarity with Jewish history – other than the obvious stuff. But, isn’t this a bit like saying nuking the Vatican will make American Catholics slink out of public life?
I don’t believe the two are linked. You have shown correlation, not causation.
American gays didn’t march on Washington in the 1930s. Where’s the “gay Israel” that gave them confidence?
That’s not to say the destruction of Israel would be a good thing. I just find it hard to believe it would result in American Jews becoming less visible.
My family are Cuban Jews, Sephardic, and a very different tradition from most American Jews. We’re never understood American Jews love affair with the left. From the people who brought you the National Socialist Party in Germany, and Stalin, and all the other lovely leftists who have murdered millions of Jews just within the last 80 years. I just don’t get it. And b/c we’re a minority within our congregation, we really can’t talk about it. You have to go along and shut up when folks start talking politics, b/c of COURSE it goes without saying that a good Jew will vote for Obama. B/c good Jews vote Democrat. Period. It’s like bizarro world, only there’s no superman to save us at the end.
I am over fifty and I am not Jewish, plus I am from the South. I was always taught in school and in church that Israel was a force for good. The people I grew up, with well they just about felt the same way and if they felt different, I never heard about it.
I now work for a major aircraft corporation. My job requires me to instruct young people on the operation of a piece of equipment. They are mostly kids under the age of twenty-five. I have found, they have a much easier time between blacks and whites, than my generation ever did. However, they seem to be much more intolerant of Jews. I don’t mean making off color jokes or comments. I mean hard anti-sematic positions. It is alien to my ears and it disturbs me.
The article makes a point about Spain and Germany once accepting Jewish settlement and then turning very dangerous to be a Jew and to be there. I then think about what I have read that is coming from the left and their seeming embrace of Islam. Yes I could see the U.S. becoming very intolerant of Jews.
Note: I am not saying all people under twenty five are anti-sematic they are not, nor am I saying my generation is pure on this because we are not. I am saying I have heard things come from some, some of these kids mouths that cause me to take note of.
Note: This is a broad sweep with what I said about people under 25. It cannot apply to all and I do not mean as such. I do mean I have heard statements that cause me to wonder.
Since WWII, 85 countries (or so) have been established. I have visited about 50 of them. Most of them treat their citizens worse than Israel treats its Arab enemies whose greatest dream is genocide. Jews are insane not to love and be beyond proud of Israel. What the Jewish people – white, brown and black — have done and are doing is beyond amazing. There is no place on earth more intense, creative, dynamic, friendly, crazy, artistic, intelligent, intimate, scientifically/technologically astute. More dancers, artists, poets, novelists, musicians, scientists, mathematicians per capita than anywhere. We have a saying: ‘If you throw a rock out of an airplane in Israel, it will land on an artist.” We are an amazing people. We are creating a new “race” of people as Mizrachi, Ethiopian and Ashkenazi intermarry. The result: Israeli women are hot and gorgeous besides. Any Jew whose chest does not swell with grand feelings and gratitude for being born a Jew does not know himself, and is deaf, dumb and blind — from willfulness, fear, ignorance, or just plain indolence — to life itself.
The problem is not “occupation” or any other claptrap put out by Jew-haters. The problem is that American Jews are, and have been, almost entirely liberal. And the corrosive disease that is liberalism is now destroying Jewry as it destroys everything.
Everything that American Jews and American liberals have endorsed over the last fifty years or more is now being turned against them. The state of permanent victimhood; the endless lying about “the poor” and the unfortunate; the fatal confusion of government confiscation with charity; the classification of citizens by race, height, baldness, sex lives, body fat. And now Jewishness.
Unless Jews learn, and learn quickly, why anti-Semitism is the new religion of the Left, they are going to be doomed to repeat history.
Adopt conservatism, people. It will save your lives.
Rabbinical Judaism- the march religion of the persecuted Jewish people had the Jerusalem of the Palestine as the Holy Jewish anchor.But the rigit-necked people have find prosperity in well-being countries and fiersly opposes the material embodiment of the prayer`s hope. Anti-Zionism posessed some religious false justification though the Judaism is oriented upon the Jewish community preservation and the Israel is the best and real place of this preservation and I must add-the best place for the national Jewish secular preservation.