American Jews and the Construction of Israel's Jewish Identity

Diaspora 9:2 2000 American Jews and the Construction of Israel's Jewish Identity1 Yossi Shain Georgetown University Introduction In 1999, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, members of the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements funded a public campaign on Israel's city billboards and in the Israeli media, calling on secular Israelis to experience their religious identity afresh. In a backlash against the monopoly and coercion exercised by religious orthodoxy—which has led many Israelis to shed their religious identities to an extent that goes beyond what their socialization by secular Zionism urged—the campaign called upon Israelis to embrace religious pluralism under the slogan "there is more than one way to be a Jew." Financed by a grant from a Jewish family foundation in San Francisco, this campaign met with a harsh and somewhat violent response from the Israeli ultra-Orthodox sector. A leading ultra-Orthodox figure stated, "Ifthis situation continues, we will have a cultural war here, the likes of which we have not seen in a hundred years" (Sontag). This latest campaign, like similar ones in recent years, is part of a growing Jewish-American involvement in the battle over Israel's Jewish identity. This battle, often described in general terms as the struggle between secular and religious Jews or between "Israeliness " and "Jewishness," is one of the most intense domestic issues in Israeli politics and civic culture, with far-reaching economic and legal ramifications. The struggle over Israel's Jewish character has also become one ofthe most contentious issues within the American Jewish community, which is grappling with its own identity. Certainly, internal Jewish-American debates regarding the standard for gauging Jewish identity are mostly informed by the reality of Jewish life in the United States and are thus somewhat distant from Israel's internal debates (Hausman). Yet the American and Israeli contexts are closely connected, as principles and practices in both places nourish and impinge on each other. Thus when, in 1997, the Israeli government and the Israeli religious establishment sought to enact the Conversion Law, "designed to formalize and institutionalize the prevailing norm, according to which the only 164 Diaspora 9:2 2000 acceptable conversions in Israel would be those performed by Orthodox rabbinical authorities," and to "delegitimize Reform and Conservative rabbis" (Ben Zvi, "Partnership" 35), a stormy controversy ensued that brought Israel-Diaspora relations to one of their lowest points. While some ofthe new generation ofAmerican Jews have become distant and even alienated from Israel in recent years, others, especially active members of the Reform and Conservative denominations , have rediscovered a new source ofJewish involvement and mobilization in the contest over Israel's Jewish identity. Being in the vanguard ofthe struggle against ultra-Orthodox domination in Israel is perceived by these movements as an affirmation of their own validity inside the United States. Thus, just as Israeli internal debates have spilled over to the Diaspora and have affected intraJewish relations inside the United States, so too have Jewish American responses become more and more critical in the shaping of Israeli reality. US-based Conservative and Reform groups, in particular , have been instrumental in the struggle to challenge the Israeli Orthodox monopoly over Jewish marriage and conversion and its domination of religious councils. Such groups have also played a role in the fight for the rights of non-Orthodox Jews to be buried in non-denominational cemeteries and have taken the lead in redirecting Jewish diasporic fundraising away from general funds for Israel to targeted assistance of institutions and programs aimed at promoting tolerance, democracy, and religious pluralism. Having discovered that today's Israel does not always accord with the values embraced in America and that, in so doing, it impinges on their own communal vitality, liberally oriented Jewish-Americans are making efforts to mold an Israel in their own image. Certainly efforts to influence the homeland's Jewish identity are not altogether new or one-sided. As early as 1964, leading JewishAmerican groups, including the American Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith, as well as the Conservative and Reform movements, urged Israel's then Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, to combat the imposition ofOrthodox domination. While the Orthodox rebuked the appeal...