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The result is that Conservative and Reform Jews have far more freedom to practice their religion in the United States than in the Jewish state. Especially if they’re women.Let a woman try to wear a tallit or tefillin and pray from a Torah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and she could wind up in jail. To Azoulay that’s not prayer but “provocation,” and he has vowed to roll back whatever meager progress has been made in recent years.Michael Oren, who has just published a hyper-partisan memoir about his years as ambassador to the United States, said one of the reasons the relationship is unraveling is that American Jews don’t understand Israelis. As for the clashes with Women of the Wall, he said, what Israeli officials see as a matter of law and order and status quo agreements, Americans see as issues of freedom of religion, women’s rights and free speech.For a guy who grew up as a Conservative Jew in America, Oren seems to have lost his understanding of the pluralistic approach to religion. What he appears to be saying is successive Israeli governments have made a Faustian bargain, trading away those principles for the votes of the ultra-religious. Israeli law may guarantee freedom of religion for all, but it doesn’t work that way in practice because an extremist minority is able to impose its rule on the rest of the population and no prime minister is about to challenge that.It may be heresy, but if you’re not an Orthodox Jew and you want to practice your Judaism as you see fit and follow the Reform or Conservative stream, America may be your Golden Medina. The separation of church and state as enshrined in the Bill of Rights is unknown in Israel, where the religious establishment is a branch of the government with considerable and often intrusive power. Moreover, the religious establishment has become increasingly right wing in both religious and political influence.The State Department’s recent report on International Religious Freedom found that in Israel “governmental and legal discrimination against non-Jews and non-Orthodox streams of Judaism continues.”A rabbinate hostile to the non-Orthodox branches of Judaism and backed by a political leadership indifferent, at best, to Diaspora concerns is a major factor in the growing rift but not the only one.A particularly damaging factor is increasing Israeli involvement in domestic American politics, with the prime minister as well as the ultra-Orthodox and nationalist- settler movement identifying with the Republican Party while 70 percent of American Jews consistently vote with the Democrats.Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama have done more than their share to bring the US-Israel relationship to its current dismal state.The rift between the two allies is partially a function of fundamental policy differences and personal animosity between the two, but it goes much deeper.There is a growing disconnect between the two societies.Netanyahu likes to see himself as the leader of the worldwide Jewish people but he’s really the elected head of the government of the State of Israel. The message from the Diaspora is “you don’t represent us, so don’t expect us to do your bidding.”JEWS ENJOY a high comfort level in America, and religious pluralism is an important reason there is so little non-Orthodox aliya. And more and more, they feel – not without justification – that their brand of Judaism is unwelcome in the Jewish state. Haredi lawmakers and leaders are demanding that conversions, particularly in the Diaspora, conducted by rabbis not approved by the rabbinate not be recognized as valid.Nahum Goldman once said the easier it is to be a Jew the tougher it is to be Jewish. In this country, synagogue membership is declining, particularly among non-Orthodox Jews, as are affiliation with Jewish organizations and philanthropic giving to Jewish causes. Meanwhile birth rates are declining and intermarriage is increasing.American Jews feel an affinity and great affection for Israel, they are proud of its impressive achievements in science, technology and the arts. It is the start-up nation.But as the generation that has firsthand memories of the Holocaust and the birth of Israel recedes into history, the potent sense of Israel as a necessity for endangered Jewry is diminishing.American Jews would again be quick to rally ‘round Israel in time or war or emergency, but today there is no feeling that Israel’s survival is at stake, not even with all of Iran’s talk about wiping it off the map. They know that while Iran may be trying to build the bomb, Israel is a regional superpower with an estimated 200 or more nuclear weapons and the planes, missiles and submarines to deliver them.The growing religious gap adds new layers to American Jewish estrangement from the Jewish state.As long as pubic officials like Religious Services Minister Azoulay say the branches of Judaism followed by the majority of American Jews is a “disaster” for Israel, and a deputy interior minister like Yaron Mazuz tells Arab and leftist Jewish Knesset members they should surrender their ID cards because “we are doing you a favor that you’re living here,” and there are no consequences, the rift will continue to grow.
Washington Watch: Jews face a widening rift
The growing rift between Israel and non-Orthodox American Jews widened last week.
