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American
Jewish Demography and the challenge of supporting Israel
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The much discussed Pew Research Center study on the American Jews has
revealed a community in rapid flux. The Pew results showed that the
non-Orthodox sectors of American Jewish society are shrinking fast thanks
to intermarriage, loss of interest and above all, low fertility. In contrast
the Orthodox sectors, especially the Haredi and Chassidic ones, are growing
rapidly.
While many have commented on the social, religious and communal
implications, there are political issues of equal or greater importance. In
25 years, and certainly in 40 or 50 years, the American Jewish community
will be smaller, more religious, less wealthy and less worldly than the
present. How will they support Israel?
Since the founding of the State of Israel, three specific areas of
American Jewish support have been critical; financial support, political
support, and cultural leveraging based on the American Protestant
mainstream and Jewish integration. Each of these is about to change.
Direct financial support given by American Jews to Israel has been vast,
to the tune of billions of dollars. During 1990-1991, at the height of the
Russian aliya to Israel, campaigns organized by the United Israel Appeal
alone gave almost $880,000,000 to Israeli causes, especially for
absorption. The number today still runs into the hundreds of millions, and
more when domestic organizations that support Israel are included. The
Israeli social welfare and educational systems in particular are enormously
dependent on American Jewish giving.
Studies of Jewish philanthropy continue to show that Jews give
disproportionately compared to other groups in the United States and that
giving to non-Jewish causes far outstrips giving to Jewish ones. Israel
remains an important priority and analysts have agonized over perceived
shifts in attitudes. The questions of where the American Jewish community
should allocate its enormous giving, at home or abroad, to Jewish or
non-Jewish causes, to education, social, cultural or other causes, are too
little discussed.
But in a few decades younger non-Orthodox and Modern Orthodox American
Jews devoted to Israel will be greatly outnumbered by Haredi and Chassidic
Jews. With a rapidly aging Jewish community and an already enormous
communal infrastructure of social service organizations, schools, and
cultural institutions, where will the money go? Given the low levels of
secular education and work participation of Haredi and Chassidic Jews in
America (and Israel), their charitable potential is suspect. Indeed, based
on their current socio-economic status, who will continue to support them?
Where will American Jewish financial support for Israel come from when the
overall pie is shrinking and has many more demands placed on it? This is
unknown.
Political support for Israel is literally the stuff of legend. That a
small minority, American Jews, should use political power so effectively
seems so exceptional that for many it can only be explained by hidden and
nefarious powers. It is rarely mentioned that the 'Israel Lobby' has been
far less successful than domestic lobbies such as the military-industrial
complex, the medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex, or the higher
educational industrial complex, various 'lobbies' for European causes such
as NATO, or the interlocked lobby of Arab states and oil companies. Of course,
Jews are not the center of these.
But the political skills and sophisticated institutional frameworks of
the 'Israel Lobby' should not be taken for granted, especially by Jews. Who
will pay for and staff these organizations two or three decades from now?
Who will bring the message of Israel's historical and legal rights into the
American public square, mobilize grassroots activists to lobby their
political representatives at all levels, and interface with American and
international bureaucracies on behalf of Israel? Will Haredi and Chassidic
lobbyists for Israel exist at all? Will they be oriented to work on behalf
of Israel in the same way as their Jewish predecessors, and will they have
the skills to work on an equal number of levels?
If the present gives any hints, lobbyists from the ultra-Orthodox sector
will be concerned in the domestic arena about preserving and expanding
their narrow communal prerogatives, welfare for families and tax credits
for education, freedom from government oversight, and other gerrymandered
advantages. Their interest and involvement with Israel as a country, as
opposed to a welfare system for their Haredi and Chassidic counterparts, is
negligible.
So too is their background in issues such as Iranian nuclear policy,
Eastern Mediterranean oil and gas exploration, global defense procurement,
or any of the myriad areas where American Jewish expertise and leadership
has been critical. Their separatism and denominational chauvinism also does
not bode well for engaging US and global policymakers on international
issues. The interest may not be there, the language will be different, and
the personalities discordant.
Separatism in behavior and culture – reflected in the continuing Haredi
rejection of Zionism and their self-imposed return to the ghetto - have
potential to undo the most extraordinary accomplishments of American Jews.
Haredization could bring about a slow-motion divorce of the most
fundamentally integrated people in America, next to the founding WASPs. The
speed and depth of Jewish integration in the 20th century was a
unique achievement, and American Jews have established themselves as an
'indispensible people' in the American fabric. Their contributions in every
sphere, legal, political, scientific, cultural and more, are second to
none.
This success has been a gift to Israel, not only in material and
political terms but because it helped normalize and spread the message of
Zionism and Israel to a receptive American population, from Jews who were
fully part of American society. American Protestants from denominations
that saw themselves as heirs of ancient Israel establishing a New Jerusalem
were also favorably inclined towards Jews. As a result American
antisemitism, and anti-Zionism have been minimal in comparison with Europe.
But changes in American demographics have begun to turn the milk sour,
as the founding Protestants have faded and been replaced by other ethnic
groups and religious denominations, many with decided animus towards Jews
and Israel. Most American Evangelicals still love Israel – and are
shamefully neither loved nor appreciated in return by American Jews. But
others are hostile, and American Christianity as a whole is increasingly
influenced by classic Christian supersessionist doctrine and modern replacement
theology, strands of which posit Palestinians as the new sacred people in
place of the Jews.
Changes in Jewish demographics will not help Jewish integration into a
more complex and competitive American mosaic, one that is increasingly
tinged, as it has long been in Europe, with classic antisemitism. At best
the result will be mutual incomprehension and slowly growing alienation.
This has been presaged by the radical hostility of the Obama administration
towards Israel and the penetration of anti-Israel ideology into the margins
of the Democratic Party. In the short term some of this hostility will be
reversed once Obama leaves office. But if Jews are unable and unwilling to
participate fully in the changing political and cultural life of the
country, their influence will be diminished. Their causes will become
marginal, including Israel.
The divides between American Jews are only growing and bode ill for the
future of the community and its support for Israel. How to bring Haredi and
Chassidic Jews into the American Jewish consensus regarding Israel is a
critical challenge for both sides. How to being about this vital dialogue
when the religious premises are so different, is a mystery.
Alex Joffe is a historian and archaeologist. He is a
Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow of the Middle East Forum.
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