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Beyond Survival and Philanthropy: American Jewry and Israel (review)
- American Jewish History
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 90, Number 3, September 2002
- pp. 337-339
- 10.1353/ajh.2003.0053
- Review
- Additional Information
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American Jewish History 90.3 (2002) 337-339
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Based on a 1996 conference in Jerusalem and at Kiryat Sde Boker—the site of David Ben-Gurion's kibbutz and the nearby archival research center that houses his papers—this collection of essays surveys the state of Israeli and American Jewish relations during the zenith of the Oslo process. The editors pose the central question: "What will hold the Diaspora and Israel together once the traditional 'crisis glue' . . . retreats to the remote background of our communities' lives?" (p. vii). That this question has receded into the background as a new crisis has beset the two communities does not detract from the extraordinarily impressive set of papers in this volume.
In this ephemeral historical moment, Steven M. Cohen and Charles S. Liebman saw a declining interest among American Jews in Israeli affairs, an erosion of what they call the lobbying and fund-raising model, as both societies become more concerned about their own internal affairs. All this was predicated on a set of circumstances, they argue, in which both Israeli and American Jews were becoming more secure and successful.
Steven Bayme proposes to substitute "personal meaning" for the attachment as Israeli need for philanthropy and political support recedes, circa 1996, and Yosef Gorny likewise sees an erosion of "American Jewry dependent upon Israel for its spiritual existence and Israel dependent upon American Jewry for its material existence" (p. 41). These papers raise once again in another context the recurring question of Jewish identity and from whence it derives—Israel and the Zionist project or the Diaspora. "Politically, some of us," writes Gorny, "are living in a national territory as a sovereign people, while the majority . . . live as free citizens with equal rights in other countries" (p. 48). [End Page 337]
But nowhere is the source of this ambiguity about Jewish identity directly faced in the papers collected for this book. Why is it only Jews who struggle with Jewish identity? Does one read essays on Catholic identity or Methodist identity? The answers to this question are apparent; yet I am often puzzled about how Jewish intellectuals inevitably become trapped in this colloquy. Curiously, while the anthology, and presumably the conference on which it was based, is predicated on the Israeli-Jewish American relationship as both communities achieved greater security, the insecurity that informs queries about Jewish identity is prevalent throughout. What each receives from the other by way of greater security in all its dimensions was not analyzed afresh, for the most part.
Ilan Troen offers us a different perspective in a brilliantly executed historical treatment of the book's central question, which provides a way of looking at multiple paths to Jewish identity. He does this, appropriately in light of the place in which the conference was held, by reviewing Ben-Gurion's agreement with Jacob Blaustein in 1950 which acknowledged the "special status of American Jewry as a viable, powerful, and creative community . . . based on a shared fate and common destiny" (pp. 67-68). Ben-Gurion adroitly distinguished, Troen tells us, between Jews outside of Israel living in the galut (exile) and those living in a vibrant and sustainable Diaspora. The religious and secular imbroglio in Israel—another piece in this puzzle—is remarked upon indirectly by Leonard Fein, who expresses "surprise" in the "staying power of pre- modern . . . Orthodoxy [during] the forward trajectory of modernity" (p. 76). And Aviezer Ravitzky adds a concise formulation when he talks of Israel as a "homeland" (the secular Zionist ideal) as opposed to living in a "holyland" (the orthodox religious ideal). This clash of competing utopias and constructed memories invites examination somewhere, but it is not to be found in this volume.
Two original and important articles on education explain why Israeli and American Jews ofttimes are at odds with each other and have misperceptions that pervade the relationship. Barry Chazan summarizes research on how Israel is taught in...