Could America Lose Its Jews To Israel? It’s a Complicated Question

With the appearance of my tenth book, “A Complicated Jew,” I’ve been thinking about my first. Published in 1977, it was called “Letters To An American Jewish Friend,” and in it I tried convincing an imaginary correspondent to leave America for Israel as I had done seven years previously.Anti-Semitism had nothing to do with my argument. Having waned progressively since World War II, it was not at the time a significant factor in American life. My contention was that, given the nature of the modern world, the only meaningful future the Jewish people had was in a Jewish state and that a serious Jew should want to be part of that. I wasn’t disputing that America was a wonderful place for Jews. I was saying that, for those Jews who cared deeply about their Jewishness, Israel was a better one.Ten books and other subjects later, I still believe that. More than ever, in fact. Except that America is no longer such a wonderful place for Jews.For a while, “Letters To An American Jewish Friend” met with a lively response. It was widely reviewed and debated, and hundreds of readers who felt that it was personally addressed to them wrote me letters of their own. I still sometimes meet American Jews who have made Aliyah (to use the Hebrew word for immigration to Israel) and tell me, “You know, your book is part of the reason I’m here.” Yet its success was short-lived. As the 1980s set in and American Jewish concerns shifted away from Israel to other things, it went out of print.In 2013, it was reissued. That this went unnoticed was personally disappointing but not surprising; second editions are rarely news. Meanwhile, though, anti-Semitism in the United States had turned into the menace that no one in the 1970s had thought it would; why then was the argument for Aliyah, which had only become stronger, not being aired publicly in the American Jewish community by others? Why isn’t it being aired now, in 2021, when anti-Semitism has gotten even worse?Partly, it’s because of Israel. It also isn’t the same country it was in 1977. It’s wealthier, more built-up, more congested, more consumerist, more contentious. It’s also far more expensive. Back then, U.S. dollars went a long way in it. They don’t any longer. The shekel is a stronger currency than the dollar.On top of which, many American Jews now regard Israel as morally tarnished. Its half-century of control over Judea and Samaria, the former Jordanian West Bank, has hardened into a permanent reality in which some two million Palestinians lack basic rights. This makes it a less attractive place to think of living in, as well as an easier target for the anti-Semites.It’s impossible to say whether an Israel that dealt more justly with the Palestinians would have occasioned less anti-Semitism. Perhaps not. No country is without its flaws and Israel’s are no worse than those of many other countries that are not the objects of international vituperation.The difference is that these other countries are not Jewish. Although it’s a macabre twist of fate that the Jewish state that was supposed to put an end to anti-Semitism has become its powerful new focus, this has at least as much to do with anti-Semitism’s perpetual ability to reinvent itself as it does with Israel’s moral shortcomings.Whatever turns it takes, Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is not about to go away; neither, then, will the new anti-Semitism. Most likely, driven by prevailing trends, it will get worse. As recent polls show, growing numbers of American Jews, especially younger ones, will seek to escape it by disassociating themselves from Israel or even joining its condemners, while the shrinking base of Israel’s supporters, drawn from the ranks of the most committed American Jews, will come under growing attack. .Why go on rooting for a team from afar in an increasingly unfriendly environment when you can play on it?Some American Jews have made that choice. A trickle settles in Israel every year. Yet publicly, the subject is taboo — and a major reason for this, ironically, is fear of anti-Semitism. Although other Americans have ancestral homelands they may be attached to – there are Italian Americans who spend their vacations in Italy and Mexican Americans who go back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico – only Jewish Americans stand to be accused of dual loyalty for feeling they have a second home in Israel. They know what the new anti-Semitism would make of it were they to talk openly about Israel as a possible first home.From Zionism’s inception, American Jews viewed a Jewish state as a haven for Jews less fortunate than themselves – for those fleeing the Tsar’s or Hitler’s Europe, for Holocaust survivors in the DP camps, for refugees from the Arab countries of the Middle East, for Jews imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain. Not even in the worst of cases will anti-Semitism threaten the Jews of America with similar fates. Yet in the worst of cases, which may be beginning to unfold, America could prove to be less of an exception to the course of Jewish history in the Diaspora than it has seemed to be until now. .Israel could be a haven for some American Jews, too — not from the persecution they won’t have to face but from social discomfort and a sense of fundamental unease in their surroundings. It’s a dynamic, humanly warm, intensely alive country of many failings and as many spectacular successes. Life in it may be economically harder than it is in America (although less so when taking into account that the Jewish education of one’s children, a tremendously costly item for many American Jewish families, is free), but it is also richly rewarding.It’s time for committed American Jews to set aside their fears and start thinking out loud about the alternative of Israel. If asked how they can consider moving to a country implicated in injustice, they can reply: “There is injustice everywhere. The question is: where do I most want justice to exist and where do I most want to help bring it about?” For some, the answer will be, “In a Jewish state.”________Mr. Halkin, whose new collection of essays will be brought out in September, is a long time contributing editor of the Sun.

Could America Lose Its Jews To Israel? It’s a Complicated Question

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