Liberal American Jews

Shuki Friedman’s “Two Jewish nations and the abyss between them” (Observations, November 3) ignores several facts on the ground with regard to American Jewry today, and incorrectly juxtaposes cause and effect with regard to the strained relations between Israelis and their American brothers.

Friedman, for example, asserts: “For many American Jews, identification with the State of Israel is a significant component of their Jewish identity .... Solidarity with the Jewish state is steadily decreasing among the younger generation as Israel becomes less important to their Jewish identity .... The State of Israel is not only pushing Jews away from identifying with it, but it is also pushing them away from the Jewish people.”

For both the parents and the “younger generation,” not only Israel, but Judaism itself has ceased to be a priority. Yet the fault hardly can be placed at Israel’s doorstep.

For the past 20 years, American Jews and their organizations have been eager to speak as the voice of American liberalism and even as the soloists of the liberal chorus. The problem lies with so many American Jews who are less interested in their fellow Jews and Jewish issues than in doing a twirl on the larger, national stage.

They are being led by liberal theoreticians who use the general Jewish public as a personal power base. The spokespeople of American Jewry should realize that they are not the American Civil Liberties Union nor the general conscience of the American people or even of American Jewry. Alas, Jewish baby boomers have moved on to find new worlds to conquer.

Not finding any or ignoring Israel’s need to defend itself as any normal nation would, they have continued to embrace the liberal doctrine of Franklin Roosevelt without noting how far to the left their cherished ideology has drifted. Jewish organizations in America are not concerned so much about Jewish survival (note the frightening intermarriage statistics over there) as they are about catching column space in The New York Times.

It seems that the American liberal Jewish establishment and many of its radical offspring on campuses believe they are unable to get headlines when they help their own people or fight against intermarriage or the radicalization of their young. Wealthy Jews in particular achieve their recognition by contributing vast sums to Democratic candidates who view Israel as the recalcitrant party in the Middle East.

Today, the successful American Jew truly believes that he has been fully accepted into gentile society and that defending Israel might jeopardize his sense of acceptance. There also lingers the old fear of being accused of dual loyalty.

Since liberalism has become their basic religious identification, these Jews reject anything from the Jewish world that clashes with “secular liberal social justice.” Unfortunately for them, Judaism is not based on the theories of Thomas Jefferson, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein or Gloria Steinem.

To the liberal American Jew, the abandonment of Judaism and Israel is not a desertion at all, but rather an expression of moral growth.

In short, it is not Israel that has alienated younger American Jews from the Jewish people – it is the desire for acceptance and integration into the wider gentile society, and at any price.

SY POLSKY Karnei Shomron