On Gabriel Sheffer’s “Loyalty and Criticism in the Relations Between World Jewry and Israel”

Professor Gabriel Sheffer, arguably Israel’s premier scholar of Israel-Diaspora relations, has authored an important essay on loyalty and criticism in Israel-Diaspora relations. Three critical hypotheses underlie this stimulating paper:

1. 1. The problems of national loyalty in Diaspora criticism of Israel are more severe today than in the early years of Jewish statehood. Therefore, aid to and interest in Israel are diminishing.

2. 2. Jews who have “adapted well” to their surrounding cultures, e.g. those with high salaries and/or advanced academic degrees, express diminished commitment to Israel. Even highly-active or “hardcore” Jews no longer perceive themselves as being in exile and therefore are more interested in building Diaspora Jewish institutions and culture than in contributing to Israel’s welfare.

3. 3. Harsh criticism of Israel, especially when publicly expressed, connotes decreased attachment to the Jewish state.

There is much to agree with in Sheffer’s hypotheses and resulting analysis. Clearly decreased Jewish identity and involvement connote decreased attachment to Israel. One of the errors committed by Peter Beinart in his much-cited 2010 New York Review of Books essay lay in his under-estimating the toll of assimilation generally upon Jewish attachments to Israel.¹ Beinart assumed that distancing from Israel was a reflection of discontent with Israel’s foreign and domestic policies. He failed to weigh adequately the more fundamental factor of assimilation and distancing from matters Jewish generally, which in turn connoted distancing from Israel.

Second, Sheffer insightfully understands that young people see Israel more as an intellectual construct than as a cause. Although, as we shall note, the Birthright Israel program may prove a corrective, there is no question at present that the motif of Israel as sacred cause is receding in Jewish historical memory. The myth of Holocaust and Return—so central to the post-1967 civic Judaism of American-Jewish leaders—largely fails to resonate among Generations X and Y.² More specifically, the relative eclipse of the Zionist youth movements, once a powerful force in American Jewish life but today a pale shadow of their former selves, testifies to transformation of belief in Israel as possessing transcendental significance to, at best, being an exciting place to visit on the Jewish map. Most importantly, Jewish identity among young people increasingly has been rooted in the culture of individualism so pervasive in America yet foreign to an ethos of collectivity and people-hood. The very term peoplehood has become anathema in some circles of American Jewish youth.³ Mixed marriage has increased to the point where collectivist norms of endogamy sound quaint at best and racist at worst. Moreover, repeatedly on surveys mixed married couples demonstrate significantly diminished attachment to Israel and to Jewish peoplehood.⁴

In this context, Sheffer is correct to argue that continued American Jewish loyalty to Israel can by no means be taken for granted. Assimilation, individualism, and disappointment with Israeli public policies combine to challenge the inherited model of an American Jewish community standing shoulder to shoulder alongside the Jewish state.

Yet Sheffer fails to address counter-trends at work in the community that not only challenge his model of a Diaspora increasingly distant from Israel but also suggests some alternate directions and modes of attachment for the future.

First, Sheffer’s comparison of the current status quo with the early years of Jewish statehood is misleading. In 1948 the cause of Israel hardly constituted a consensus item on the American Jewish agenda. Two distinct groupings—the American Council for Judaism and Satmar Hasidim—stood in steadfast opposition to Jewish statehood, albeit for entirely different reasons. The 1950 Ben-Gurion–Blaustein agreement secured support for Israel from the heretofore non-Zionist but highly influential American Jewish Committee.⁵ By contrast, today both Satmar and the American Council for Judaism have been marginalized. The AJC, by contrast, stands at the very center of the pro-Israel advocacy groupings. Whatever issues of distancing between American Jewry and Israel exist—and, to be sure, they are quite tangible—no substantive grouping within the American Jewish community stands...