ISRAEL AT 40
A New Religion?
Two thinkers disagree on Israel's meaning to
American Jews
DAVID HOLZEL
Staff Writer
I
srael's existence has changed and
challenged American Jews, but
in ways no one dreamed of 40 years
ago when the state was founded.
Ask two American Jewish
thinkers what impact Israel has made
on Jews in this country and you will get
— to borrow from the old joke — a
minimum of two answers.
Has Israel become the religion of
American Jews? Has the Jewish state
replaced God and Torah as the focal
point of Jewish consciousness? Have the
613 mitzvot boiled down to a single
prime directive — support Israel,
preferably with cash?
Arthur Hertzberg says yes; Jacob
Neusner says no.
The American-Jewish identity is
wholly home grown, argues Neusner, a
Conservative rabbi and professor of
Judaic studies at Brown University.
"There's nothing that we've done that
isn't particular to America. We have
figured out how to be Jewish in a free
society. It's an enormous achievement
and it's particular to our community."
All without the influence of Israel.
In fact, says Neusner, American Jews
are not particularly interested in Israel
— the real Israel.
"Israel is the Jewish equivalent of
Disneyland. We go there to buy fan-
tasies, not to buy mundane realities.
"We're not engaged with very much
of their culture. We may read a few of
their novelists, but that's about it."
Many early Zionists had hoped that
Israel would become the spiritual and
cultural center of the Jewish world.
Israel has failed on that score, Neusner
argues.
"They're not giving us scholarship.
They're not writing the history of the
Jews for us. They're not giving us
Jewish philosophy. They're not giving
us Jewish theology. They're not con-
tributing to the development of our in-
ner life in any important way."
Neusner triggered an uproar last
year by declaring in a Washington Post
op-ed piece that there is no reason to
feel guilty about not living in Israel.
The fury he encountered obviously still
rankles and he grows heated when he
- discusses the affair.
-"All I said was that it is great to be
a Jew in America. If you think I'm
wrong, go live in Israel.
"I was criticized by people who, by
their actions, agreed with every word I
said. I said you can yell and scream at
me and you're still living in Southfield.
And you haven't got the slightest inten-
tion of living in Israel."
Israel became what Neusner calls
the "centerpiece of people's imaginative
lives" after the Six-Day War. Israel's
lightning victory prompted a "mes-
sianic realization" for many.
The 1982 invasion of Lebanon
removed much of the luster from
Israel's image. After Lebanon, Israel
was no longer the be-all and end-all of
Jewish life, Neusner says. Meanwhile,
"the interests of American Jews are
becoming more varied."
The Palestinian uprising of recent
NEUSNER: Made in USA.
American Jews and Israelis, Neusner
says. But "American Jews are not ter-
ribly engaged with Israeli life."
Arthur Hertzberg concurs. The
"Israel is the Jewish
equivalent of Disneyland. We
go there to buy fantasies."
critical difference between Israelis and
American Jews is language, Hertzberg
asserts. "The American Jewish com-
munity lives in English. Israel lives in
Hebrew. And you do not understand
Israel if you don't speak Hebrew."
American Jewish identification with
Israel. And while- the attitudes of U.S.
Jews toward Israel have shifted,
Neusner believes that the community's
behavor will remain unchanged.
"People will still give money and
there will be plenty of political support.
So on the whole, things will go on as
before."
There is mutual concern between
According to Hertzberg, a professor
of religion at Dartmouth College, Israel
is so central to the "faith" of American
Jews that a heretical position on the
Jewish state is the only thing for which
one can be threatened with excom-
munication.
"Henry Kissinger is a perfect exam-
ple," he says. The former secretary of
state married a non-Jew in a civil
ceremony on a Shabbat morning. "For
days has only deepened the ambivalent
none of that did they say, 'Let's throw
him out of the Jewish community.'
"But when as secretary of state he
began to be suspected of not being as
totally devoted to the cause of Israel as
the president of Hadassah — then he
began to be attacked as traitorous.
"You can't be excommunicated in
the American Jewish community for
religious deviations, but you can be ex-
communicated if the majority opinion
is that you are insufficiently devoted to
Israel:'
This, he says, is what is happening
to New Jewish Agenda, which calls for
Israel to negotiate with the Palestine
Liberation Organization and is being
ostracized in many Jewish com-
munities. And it is what happened to
Jacob Neusner.
Hertzberg, who also is a Conser-
vative rabbi, edited the seminal an-
thology of Zionist thought, The Zionist
Idea. He says American Jews were not
always in love with the idea of Israel.
"Forty years ago there were fights
between the Zionists and the anti-
Zionists who didn't want the State of
Israel to be declared because, they
feared, it would bring into question
their status as Americans."
It was the "old-line Reform crowd"
who held this position. They were allied
with the Bundists, "the internationalist
(Jewish) left who were against any na-
tional state — especially a Jewish one.
"The Federation types in those days
were not Zionists," Hertzberg adds.
"They were dominated by a non-Zionist
American Jewish Committee and the
Joint Distribution Committee."
What turned American Jewish opi-
nion around to support for a Jewish
state, he says, was the Holoclust, and
one legacy of the Holocaust in par-
ticular: the Jewish refugees.
"The very people who were not ter-
ribly happy about the creation of a
Zionist state were not ready to do bat-
tle to open the doors of America to the
THE THIRD DECADE
THIRD PRESIDENT: Zalman
Shazar, 1963-1973.
MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH: Adolf Eichmann, a major
Nazi leader, was kidnapped in South America by
Israel and brought to trial in Jerusalem in 1961. He
was found guilty of war crimes and executed.
FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1988
SIX-DAY WAR: After the Arab states, led by Egypt, formed a war pact, Israel struck out
on June 5, 1967 and destroyed the armies that had massed along its borders, taking
over new territory in Sinai, Gaza and Judea and Samaria (West Bank), and re-unifying
Jerusalem.