Sixteen Israeli scholars and journalists, who spent two weeks each at 16 American cities as “scholars in residence,” have reported a changed and more positive view on their part of the American Jewish community and the feeling that American Jews and Israelis have more similarities than diversities.
The Israelis reported their findings recently in a dialogue with 16 American Jewish intellectuals in an all-day session at the Carnegie International Center here. The gathering was sponsored by the Zionist Council of the Arts and Sciences, the academic arm of the American Zionist Federation. The Zionist Council and the American Zionist Youth Foundation, sponsored the “scholars in residence” project.
The Israelis who had visited the United States before said they had found positive changes among American Jews since their prior visit. Hanoch Bar-Tov, a novelist, who was resident in Buffalo and Rochester, meeting mainly with university faculty members and students, said since his visit in the late 1950s he had found “a larger percentage of people with a knowledge of Hebrew, with a better knowledge of Israel, people who ask questions, who are interested.”
BETTER INFORMED ABOUT ISRAEL
He and others said they had found a “quest for religion” among some American Jewish youth. Bar-Tov called it “a serious quest,” adding there was also “a search for new directions” among the young Jews.
The visitors agreed that while American Jews seemed better informed about Israel, there also was a great deal of misinformation, particularly concerning Israel’s political and social situation. A number of the Israelis commented critically about the low level of Jewish education they found among Jewish young people.
Prof. Shlomo Avineri of Hebrew University said that for the first time in the Jewish experience in America, “there is an economically and educationally deprived people,” the American Blacks, “which has a wrong view of the Jews because of the social situation in America and sees the Jews standing between it and what it wants.” He said the upward movement of the American Jew had not only not stopped anti-Semitism “but had somehow enhanced its chances for gaining.”
Several of the Israeli scholars said they had found that American Jews wanted Israeli Jews “to be more moral” than other people. The 16 Israelis agreed that the degree of American Jewish involvement in Israel’s destiny was “very high” and that they had all received a new and more positive viewpoint about American Jewry.
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