American Jews can strengthen and preserve their Jewish identity by forging more meaningful ties to Israel, while Israelis can enrich their understanding of Jewish life by learning more about Diaspora Jews.
So suggested American and Israeli participants at a “town meeting” last Saturday night on Israel-Diaspora relations. It was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations during its annual fact-finding mission here.
The discussion reflected a consensus that participants said had been absent in such cross-cultural exchanges in past years, as well as a new recognition that the Diaspora has something to offer Israel beyond financial and political support.
One Israeli participant, Mordechai Abraham, urged the American Jewish leaders to press the Israeli government for the study of Diaspora Jewry in the Israeli school curriculum, which now offers nothing on the subject. Such exposure would help teach Israelis important lessons about religious pluralism and tolerance, he said.
Shlomo Avineri, a political science professor at Hebrew University, and one of the panelists, said Israel is now only a cause around which American Jews mobilize and a country they visit. But he said Israel can and should play a crucial role in preserving Jewish meaning and continuity.
“If we think the relationship is important,” he said, “we need to make the reality of Israel existentially present in the life of every Jewish family and person in the United States and the Diaspora.”
He said he would like to see “every Jewish child” spend a year in Israel, and adults arrange a sabbatical here.
‘A WAREHOUSE OF JEWISH MEMORIES’
“It won’t (create) a great, abstract messianic love for Israel,” said Avineri, but it would make them “understand that life here has meaning and content that’s different,” and it would change their relationship to the country.
Avram Infeld, a panelist who is the director of Melitz, a center of Zionist and Jewish education here, said that while Israel is a “warehouse of Jewish memories” that can fortify Jewish identity in the Diaspora, Israelis also need more knowledge of Diaspora Jewry and Jewish tradition.
In Israeli schools, he said, students are taught that the plight of Diaspora Jews is limited to assimilation, anti-Semitism, or aliyah.
Bernice Balter, a panelist representing the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, agreed on the dearth of knowledge. “The tendency in Israel,” she said, is to focus on “the awful things in the Diaspora” and ignore the successes.
She also highlighted sharp differences between the American and Israeli sources of Jewish identity. In the first case, it is Judaism, “where the synagogue is the supreme Jewish institution,” while in the other, it is nationalism, she said.
“Living in Israel is all it takes to be Jewish,” she said, adding that in Israel there is a deep disregard for religious pluralism because “they don’t care much about Judaism.”
Avineri challenged her argument, saying that the synagogue is “the portable homeland of the Jewish people in exile” and that “people living in their own culture don’t need it.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
