Judy Maltz Divorcing the Diaspora: How Netanyahu Is Finally Writing Off U.S. Jews
Divorcing the Diaspora: How Netanyahu Is Finally Writing Off U.S. Jews
Until not long ago, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan
Sharansky was the go-to guy for anyone seeking assurance that Israel
did, indeed, value its relationship with American Jews.
Every time it seemed the
"Western Wall deal – that promise to provide Reform and Conservative
Jews with an egalitarian place of their own for prayer at the Jewish
holy site – was off, Sharansky could be counted on to argue otherwise. I
know Prime Minister Benjamin well, he would tell the skeptics, and no
other Israeli leader understands, as he does, the strategic importance
of the American Jewish community for Israel.
The former Soviet dissident
is singing a different tune nowadays. That became profoundly evident
during a special Knesset session held last week on the Western Wall controversy, attended by a delegation of world Jewish leaders.
Noting that the Israeli
government had shown no inclination whatsoever to mend the growing rift
with American Jewry since the deal was officially suspended more than
four months ago, Sharansky warned the participants: It is inevitable
that the crisis will continue.
Coming from the last of the true believers, his words reverberated loudly.
In a sense, Sharansky was echoing what many observers of Israel-Diaspora relations have
been saying, both out loud and behind closed doors, in recent months:
that Israel has concluded it no longer needs American Jews. Or at least
two-thirds of them, as Dan Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador to
Israel, pointed out recently, referring to the majority who vote
Democrat, hold progressive views and tend to identify as Reform or Conservative Jews.
As Shapiro warned at a
recent conference sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League: There is an
idea that has some currency in certain circles around the Israeli
government that says, You know what, we can write off that segment of
American Jewry because in a couple of generations their children or
grandchildren will assimilate. So lets focus on the Orthodox who are an
important constituency but smaller. Lets focus on Evangelicals,
and we can sustain our support from the American public by focusing on
those populations and writing off and being dismissive of Jewish
progressives.
The evidence supporting this theory has been piling up, the most obvious example being the Israeli governments suspension of the Western Wall deal. Following three-and-a-half years of negotiations, in January 2016 the
government approved the plan to expand and upgrade the temporary
egalitarian prayer platform located at the southern side of the Western
Wall. rabbis – and in some cases, even by
Orthodox-ordained ones – would not be eligible for Israeli citizenship.
This decision clearly did not take into consideration the fact that the
overwhelming majority of affiliated Jews in the United States belong to
the Reform and Conservative movements.
Diaspora Jews – particularly
those in America – received another jolt just a few weeks later, when
news broke that Israel maintains a blacklist of overseas rabbis.
The list, compiled by the Chief Rabbinate, contained the names of 160
rabbis, most of them American, whose letters certifying the Jewishness
of candidates for marriage in Israel have been rejected.
Topping all this off are the
constant insults and barbs being hurled at Reform and Conservative Jews
by well-known Orthodox rabbis in Israel, not to mention members of
Netanyahus own Likud party. More often than not, the prime minister has
let them get away with this name-calling.
Just
as he isnt standing up for America Jews in Israel, he isnt standing up
for them on their own turf either. Numerous incidents of anti-Semitism
in the United States over the past year have left the American Jewish
community feeling increasingly vulnerable. But they have drawn few, if
any, responses from the Israeli prime minister.
Evangelicals ascendant
If Israel is, indeed,
experiencing a change of heart about American Jews, the signs were
already evident a few years back. Many observers trace the shift to March 2015 when Netanyahu delivered his famous speech before the U.S. Congress against the Iranian nuclear deal,
which was about to be finalized. Considering that 70 percent of
American Jews had voted for Barack Obama, Netanyahus efforts to lead a
revolt against him were seen by many in the Jewish community as
unconscionable.
The election of Donald Trump,
with whom Netanyahu is on much better terms, has naturally emboldened
those who believe Israel owes nothing to American Jews and can make do
without them.
With Netanyahu enjoying a
direct line to the White House these days, there is much less dependency
on the Jewish lobby in America. That is especially true considering the
unconditional support he enjoys from Christian Evangelicals, a key base
for the Trump administration. Indeed, on controversial issues like
settlement expansion, Israels right-wing government gets much more
support from Christian Evangelicals than it does from the largely
progressive Jewish community in America.
Michael Oren, the former
Israeli ambassador to the United States and now a Knesset member from
the center-right Kulanu party, believes it would be a strategic mistake
for Israel to write off American Jews. Yet at the same time, if growing
numbers of Israelis view American Jews as a lost cause, he says,
American Jews are also partly to blame.
We went to American Jews and
told them that the Iran deal endangers 6 million Jews in Israel, and
that its not an American political issue, but rather, a matter of Jewish
existence, he recounts, and I dont need to tell you what happened.
Nachman Shai, a member of
the opposition Zionist Union, also considers the Iran nuclear deal a key
turning point, but for different reasons than Oren. For Bibi
(Netanyahu) to come out like that against a Democratic president who
enjoyed such huge support among American Jews was like a smack on the
head for them, he says.
Netanyahu will never declare
out loud that he has written off American Jews, according to Shai, but
his behavior seems to indicate otherwise. Whether its the Iran deal or
his lack of response to anti-Semitism in the United States, its clear
that his top priority these days is to get Trump to reevaluate the Iran
deal, so he doesnt want to antagonize anyone in the administration, says
the lawmaker. Everything Bibi does is motivated by what he believes to
be in Israels best interests, which is not necessarily the best
interests of the Jewish people.
Leaders of the non-Orthodox movements agree that the signs are all there.
What I can say is that the
actions the government has been taking suggest very loudly and clearly
to Jews in North America that we dont matter and that we can be
disrespected and delegitimized without serious consequence to strategic
issues, whether it be security or some of the other many challenges
Israel faces, and I think thats incontrovertible, says Rabbi Rick
Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.
Non-Orthodox Jews see this
prime minister and his current decisions as either not finding our cause
compelling or making a calculation that says, You know what, we have
enough support from other areas. It wont be a disaster if we lose the
overwhelming majority of American Jews.
Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of
the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, blames basic ignorance in
Israel about Jewish life in America.
Sure, were facing huge
challenges like assimilation, acculturation and intermarriage, he notes,
but at the same time, youve got 6 million Jews here, 94 percent of whom
are proud to be Jewish and 4 million of whom are affiliated with a
religious institution. To think that two-thirds of American Jews are
going to disappear in the next 10 years is ridiculous. But
astonishingly, many Israeli leaders seem to believe that to be the case
and that somehow or other Israels strategic concerns can be carried by a
very small Orthodox population, along with Evangelicals.
'Untenable situation'
The Ruderman Family
Foundation has taken up the challenge in recent years of educating
Israelis about the Jewish American community, often through delegation
visits to the United States. That is why founder Jay Ruderman finds
recent actions of the Israeli government especially frustrating.
The current Israeli
administration seems to be in the completely untenable situation of
choosing between continuing to build strong ties to the American Jewish
community or ensuring its political survival, he notes, and survival
seems to be winning.
The best proof, Ruderman
continues, is its about-face on the Western Wall deal. This backtracking
may ensure the Israeli governments political survival but threatens the
vital relationship Israel has with American Jews, he warns.
In July 2010, when Israel
was considering yet another controversial conversion law, a group of
Jewish American senators drafted a protest letter, warning that if
passed, the legislation would harm the bilateral strategic relationship
between the United States and Israel. And guess what? The bill suddenly
disappeared, recalls Oren. Compare that to what happened a couple of
months ago when a group of Jewish senators sent a letter
protesting the suspension of the Western Wall deal and the latest
conversion law. It hardly made the news. And that, to me, is the entire
story in a nutshell.
Not all Orthodox Jews in
America are happy with whats going on either. At a recent Knesset
session that addressed the growing rift between Israel and American
Jewry, Jerry Silverman, president of the Jewish Federations of North
America and an Orthodox Jew himself, gave voice to their concerns about
the Western Wall deal. What many Orthodox rabbis have said to me is,
Listen, we may not have been in agreement about the solution, but once
theres an agreement, and once its signed off, it should be implemented,
he said.
Rabbi Ari Berman, the
recently appointed president of Yeshiva University and a prominent
figure in the Modern Orthodox world, stopped short of criticizing the
Israeli government but suggested it could benefit by investing more in
its relations with American Jewry.
It is critical for Israel to
consider the fate and fortunes of all Jews, whether in Israel or the
Diaspora, no matter their ideological proclivities, he wrote in an
email. At the most basic level, this is a matter of utility. Jews both
in Israel and the Diaspora need each others support. But in a more
profound sense, the very nature of the State of Israel is that it
aspires to serve as a home for all Jews and as such must factor in the
concerns of the broader Jewish populace in its decision-making.
Avinoam Bar-Yosef, president
of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute, is still willing
to give Netanyahu the benefit of the doubt. To be sure, he says, there
are factions in the government, specifically the ultra-Orthodox,
who would be delighted to issue a metaphorical writ of divorce to large
segments of American Jewry. But I really dont think this is the
position of the prime minister, he insists. If anything, my impression
is that he is much more interested than any of his predecessors in
Diaspora Jews.
Jacobs, of the Reform movement, takes little
comfort from these words and warns Israelis leaders not to downplay the
crisis with American Jewry.
They keep saying theres not a
deep division. To the contrary – its very real, he argues. We hear it
nonstop. Its real, its deep and it needs to be addressed, and the next
move has to come from the government of Israel. There need to be
concrete deeds that show that we matter.
Short of that, he warns, this division will grow stronger.
Haaretz Correspondent
The
plan stipulated that the new and improved space would be visible to all
visitors entering the holy site, and would share an entryway with the
existing, gender-segregated prayer platforms on the northern side of the
Western Wall. It also envisioned the creation of a new public authority
that would administer the egalitarian prayer area, which would include
representatives of the Conservative and Reform movements.
When the plan was approved,
it was hailed as historic – the first time the Israeli government had
ever provided official recognition to the non-Orthodox movements at the
Western Wall. For close to a year and a half, though, the government
refrained from implementing the plan, and in late June, under pressure
from his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu pushed through a vote to have it officially frozen.
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