en
students in New York's afternoon Hebrew
schools in the mid-1980s was "The State of
Israel is the most important country in the
world for Jews."
And in a 1989 survey of U.S. Jews, 73 per-
cent said supporting Israel was either an "es-
sential" or "desirable" trait for being a "good
Jew." This was only six points less than those
who said believing in God was "essential"
or "desirable."
As such writers as Arthur Hertzberg and
Leonard Fein have asserted, Israel became
a new faith, a new god, the ultimate litmus
test in being Jewish. It didn't necessarily sup-
plant Judaism as a faith, but it gave it a new
dimension that was immediate — and tan-
gible. Only by opposing Israel — not disbe-
lieving in God or marrying out — could a Jew
be "excommunicated" in America, claimed
Rabbi Hertzberg.
And now, because of a famous handshake
at the White House on Sept. 13, the question
of the day is whether a genuine, authentic
Mideast peace — if it comes, when it comes
— will change not only that region, but also
how American Jews relate to Israel and to
Judaism itself:
Did American Jews become crisis junkies?
Will the loss of external threats mean that
Judaism now largely faces an internal threat
— a crisis of identity and commitment and
knowledge?
Will those U.S. Jews who identified more
with Israel, the state, than with Judaism, the
religion, be less Jewishly involved?
Can American Judaism stand on its own
theological and spiritual feet? Are American
Jews — and their rabbis — so inclined for
this to happen?
And, as David Teutsch, president of the
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyn-
cote, Pa., asked, did American Jews let Is-
Now would a lasting
Mideast accord affect
American Judaism?
rael's never-ending crises "paper over our fail-
ure to build an intensive Jewish community
for most Jews? Most don't have a Jewish com-
munity that is home to them, that reinforces
fundamental Jewish lifestyles. Unless we
find a way to pass on Jewish values, Jewish
culture will be diluted."
Most Jewish leaders and thinkers believe
that an Israel at peace will free energy, time,
creativity — and money — now devoted to
Israel so American Jewish life can reorient
itself redefine itself, renew itself They en-
vision Jewish culture (music, literature, art,
dance, etc.) replacing Jewish ethnicity (lox,
bagels, a certain deprecating humor, etc.);
Jewish education being revitalized; Jewish
religious issues, ethics and spirituality being
invigorated.
To David Teutsch, this would be a welcome
antidote to the "preoccupation with survival"
that has dominated Jewish life for the past
century. Such a fixation, he said, "is a recipe
for death. You have to be prepared to live a
life that's rich and ennobling if there's to be
a Jewish community ... Most American Jews
have gotten so used to being spiritually de-
prived that the alternative has become as im-
plausible as a ghetto kid expecting to go to
Harvard."
Howard Gelberd of Detroit's Agency for
Jewish Education added, "We have to trade
war and Holocaust for role models and a
sense of history.
"The tanks, in theory, are gone. We're not
going to war. So we have to focus on learning
culture - and that's not cutting out paper
menorahs and and coloring seder plates
with crayons.
"In the past, we didn't have solu-
tions so we didn't get dollars. We
have answers now. We know
what works. And we know a child
who doesn't feel he comes from some place,
isn't going some place. The message is to ed-
ucate, and people will give on purpose, and
not just respond to crisis."
Intoxicated
on Israel
I
srael is — and probably always will be
— a place of transcendence; a geopolit-
ical/religious/ spiritual shout that the
Dry Bones (as the prophet Ezekiel called
the Jews in exile) had come to life again in
a land of their own. For many American Jews,
Israel became the embodiment of Jewish peo-
plehood, the third "leg" of Judaism.
(The other "legs" are God and Torah, the
religious foundations ofJudaism.)
This does not necessarily imply that such
Jews were any "less Jewish" than those who
observe each of the 613 mitzvot. Just that
they expressed their Jewishness differently
— and in a way that satisfied them as more
overt religiosity could not.
"Israel helped
many American
Jews out of their
deep ambiva-
lence about be-
ing committed to
Judaism as a re-
ligion and to get-
ting ahead in
America," said
Arthur Green, a
The Rabin-Arafat handshake
may change not only their region,
but how U.S. Jews relate to Israel.