ISRAEL AT 40
A New Religion?
Two thinkers disagree on Israel's meaning to
American Jews
us Jewish theology. They're not con-
tributing to the development of our in-
Staff Writer
ner life in any important way?'
Neusner triggered an uproar last
srael's existence has changed and year by declaring in a Washington Post
challenged American Jews, but op-ed piece that there is no reason to
in ways no one dreamed of 40 years feel guilty about not living in Israel.
ago when the state was founded. The fury he encountered obviously still
Ask two American Jewish rankles and he grows heated when he
thinkers what impact Israel has made discusses the affair.
on Jews in this country and you will get
"All I said was that it is great to be
— to borrow from the old joke — a a Jew in America. If you think I'm
minimum of two answers.
wrong, go live in Israel.
Has Israel become the religion of
"I was criticized by people who, by
American Jews? Has the Jewish state their actions, agreed with every word I
replaced God and Torah as the focal said. I said you can yell and scream at
point of Jewish consciousness? Have the me and you're still living in Southfield.
613 mitzvot boiled down to a single And you haven't got the slightest inten-
prime directive — support Israel, tion of living in Israel."
preferably with cash?
Israel became what Neusner calls
Arthur Hertzberg says yes; Jacob the "centerpiece of people's imaginative
Neusner says no.
lives" after the Six-Day War. Israel's
The American-Jewish identity is lightning victory prompted a "mes-
wholly home grown, argues Neusner, a sianic realization" for many.
Conservative rabbi and professor of
The 1982 invasion of Lebanon
Judaic studies at Brown University. removed much of the luster from
"There's nothing that we've done that Israel's image. After Lebanon, Israel
isn't particular to America. We have was no longer the be-all and end-all of
figured out how to be Jewish in a free Jewish life, Neusner says. Meanwhile,
society. It's an enormous achievement "the interests of American Jews are
and it's particular to our community." becoming more varied!'
All without the influence of Israel.
The Palestinian uprising of recent
In fact, says Neusner, American Jews days has only deepened the ambivalent
are not particularly interested in Israel
— the real Israel.
"Israel is the Jewish equivalent of "Israel is the Jewish
Disneyland. We go there to buy fan- equivalent of Disneyland. We
tasies, not to buy mundane realities.
"We're not engaged with very much go there to buy fantasies?'
of their culture. We may read a few of
their novelists, but that's about it!"
American Jewish identification with
Many early Zionists had hoped that Israel. And while the attitudes of U.S.
Israel would become the spiritual and Jews toward Israel have shifted,
cultural center of the Jewish world. Neusner believes that the community's
Israel has failed on that score, Neusner behavor will remain unchanged.
argues. ,
"People will still give money and
"They're not giving us scholarship. there will be plenty of political support.
They're not writing the history of the So on the whole, things will go on as
Jews for us. They're not giving us before."
Jewish philosophy. They're not giving
There is mutual concern between
DAVID HOLZEL
I
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
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!'
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
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 Holocaust, 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.
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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.