Earlier this month, The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman penned an article blaming American Jewry’s growing dissonance with Israel on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition’s push for judicial reform. The piece is pointedly titled “American Jews, You Have to Choose Sides on Israel” and warns United States Jewish Leaders of dire consequences should they fail to speak out against Israeli government action.
Friedman joins a chorus of Jewish Americans condemning Israel’s proposed court reforms. In November, former Anti-Defamation League (ADL) head Abe Foxman expressed dismay by sounding the alarm that the passage of specific changes to Israeli law may cause Israel to resemble a fundamentalist religious state and a theocratic nationalist state. Indeed, religion and nationalism are at the core of strained diaspora ties with Israel.
Both from a bureaucratic and demographic angle, the expanding religious order in Israel represents a challenging pattern for American Jewry, whose instincts are largely wedded to prioritizing progressive causes above embracing Hebraic tradition. According to a 2020 Pew Study on Jewish Americans, when asked what they deem essential to their Jewish identity, almost 60% of Jewish respondents answered “working for justice and equality,” while only 15% identified “observing religious law (Halacha)” as central to their Jewish character.
American Jewry’s disillusionment with Israel is linked to the country’s resistance in ascribing to enlightened paradigms of US Jewish societal trends, which paints nationalism and religion as primitive impulses and provincial ideologies.
Jewish Americans remain staunch advocates for a diminished role of religion in America. Last year, the US Supreme court ruled in favor of high school football coach Joe Kennedy. It determined that Kennedy publicly praying on the 50-yard line alongside uniformed players was within his constitutional right and did not present a coercive effect on his students.
Jewish groups felt differently, including the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which joined non-Jewish organizations on a brief warning that Kennedy’s actions would “compel, pressure, persuade or influence his students to engage in religious activity.” The idea of public religious fealty retaining a corrosive impact on society helps underscore the suspicion with which many US Jews regard evangelical Christians and delineates their reluctance to cultivate partnerships with Christian Zionists, who remain Israel’s most reliable American allies.
Referencing the 2022 American National Family Life Survey, authors Samuel Abrams and Jack Wertheimer note that “69 percent of politically liberal Jews believe religion is more problematic than helpful.”
Moreover, orthodox Jews, who are identifiably Jewish and overtly religious, are the most affected cohort experiencing a rise of antisemitic attacks in cities like New York. Yet US Jews outside of orthodox enclaves remain immune to their suffering. The silence from synagogue pulpits and within Jewish classrooms about developments in places like Borough Park demonstrates a preference to dampen any association with haredi Jews rather than intervene in a sect whose habits and rituals are deemed unrefined by Western cultural standards.
US Jewry's discomfort
American Jewry’s discomfort with nationalist principles and religious tradition is also revealed from the prism of movies advertised at various US Jewish film festivals. Shows whose themes revolve around the Holocaust are still emphasized and indicate how depicting Jews through the lens of powerless victims in Europe is still preferable to accentuating the strength of Israeli Jewish soldiers.
And while some heartwarming impressions of Orthodox families exist, many past on-screen portrayals of religious Jews rely on the tired paradigm of a young community member rejecting Orthodoxy’s limitations. At times, representations stumble on the sinister.
IN BARREN, a childless couple has difficulty conceiving. After the husband leaves to travel to Ukraine and pray for a child at Rabbi Nachman’s grave, an Orthodox rabbi moves in and rapes the wife, claiming it is part of the treatment plan. This depressing caricature is hardly an outlier and illustrates the skepticism with which Jewish Americans perceive their religion.
This critical posture towards traditional Judaism demonstrates the determination of mainstream Jewish groups to deny meeting with Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich during his recent visit to the US. Smotrich’s disgraceful statement calling for the Palestinian village of Huwara to be destroyed days after Jewish vigilantes torched cars, businesses and homes following a terrorist attack in which Palestinians murdered two Israeli brothers and that it was wrong and inflamed an already volatile security situation.
Yet he has since expressed sincere regret over his comments. Still, Jewish institutions refuse to extend the same capacity for redemption and forgiveness that is afforded to liberal figureheads like Al Sharpton or even Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whose antisemitic remarks and subsequent apologies did not preclude them from engaging with or receiving protection from some of the same leaders who called for their communities to boycott Smotrich.
That some of these establishments have also granted statesman status to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, a man who has fomented terrorism against Jews by pledging to continue the PA’s terror reward system, says more about a reluctance to meet with lawmakers who obstruct the advancement of a Western progressive ethos than it does about a sincere distaste for hateful rhetoric.
While appropriately highlighting the thousands of Israelis marching against judicial reforms, there is a failure among American Jewry to acknowledge those Israelis for whom accentuating religion is also important. For some, protesting under the fashionable slogan of “Israel’s democracy is at stake” is merely more palatable than admitting religious unease.
The 2022 Israel Democracy Institute Index found that, when asked which component, democratic or Jewish, should dominate in Israel, only 26% of Israeli Jews surveyed felt Israel’s democratic character should be the dominant element in Israeli society.
It is not the Israeli government’s responsibility, nor is it in its interest to replicate and respond to the ideological pursuits of Jewish Americans. Israel’s coalition can prudently navigate a complicated landscape by stressing its distinct and critical role as a refuge for all Jews, regardless of religious persuasion and that preserving Judaism’s societal role is central to its survival as a Jewish nation.
The writer is a pro-Israel advocate who resides in New York.