Israel Matzav

Educating American Jews

Daniel Gordis looks at the reaction of Jewish students at Brandeis University to Michael Oren's appearance on campus for graduation and worries about these students becoming 'Jewish leaders' (Hat Tip: David C).

This is where we are today. For many young American Jews, the only association they have with Israel is the conflict with the Palestinians. Israel is the country that oppresses Palestinians, and nothing more.

No longer is Israel the country that managed to forge a future for the Jewish people when it was left in tatters after the Holocaust. Israel is not, in their minds, the country that gave refuge to hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from North Africa when they had nowhere else to go, granting them all citizenship, in a policy dramatically different from the cynical decisions of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to turn their Palestinian refugees into pawns in what they (correctly) assumed would be a lengthy battle with Israel.

Israel is not proof that one can create an impressively functioning democracy even when an enormous portion of its citizens hail from countries in which they had no experience with democratic institutions. Israel is not the country in which, despite all its imperfections, Beduin women train to become physicians, and Arab citizens are routinely awarded PhDs from the country’s top universities. Israel is not the country in which the classic and long-neglected language of the Jews has been revived, and which produces world class literature and authors routinely nominated for Nobel Prizes.

Nor is Israel the place where Jewish cultural creativity is exploding with newfound energy, as the search for new conceptions of what Jewishness might mean in the 21st century are explored with unparalleled intensity, particularly among some of the country’s most thoughtful young people. No longer is Israel understood to be the very country that created the sense of security and belonging that American Jews – and these very students – now take completely for granted.

No, Israel is none of those things. For many young American Jews, it is only the country of roadblocks and genocide, of a relentless war waged against the Palestinians for no apparent reason. For everyone knows that Palestinians are anxious to recognize Israel and to live side-by-side with a Jewish democracy. That, of course, is why Hamas still openly declares its commitment to Israel’s annihilation, and that is why Hizbullah has, according to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, accumulated “more missiles than most governments in the world.”

None of this is to suggest that Israel is blameless in the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, or that the present government has a plan for ending it. Those are entirely different matters. The point is that even if these students hold Israel partially (or even largely) accountable for the intractable conflict with the Palestinians, even if one believes that it should have conducted Operation Cast Lead differently, or even if one disapproves of its policies in the West Bank, for example, it is a devastatingly sad day for world Jewry when those issues are the only ones that one associates with Israel, when mere mention of the Jewish state evokes not the least bit of pride from students graduating from a prestigious institution long associated with the very best of American Jewish life.

...

The student-thugs at UC Irvine, who disrupted Oren’s speech on campus in February, have won. They have set the standard for how one treats any mention of Israel on any campus. Israel is nothing but a legitimate whipping post even at institutions of higher learning, and sane discussion of its rights and wrongs need not be defended, even in communities ostensibly committed to civil and intelligent discourse.

Tragically, even these students at Brandeis, one of the great institutions of American Jewish life, had nothing terribly different to say to the world. Theirs are only more tepid versions of the delegitimization now spreading across the international community like wildfire.

One shudders to imagine a future in which they might be our leaders.

The problem, as Gordis hints, is the (lack of) Jewish education being given to students today. If you are Jewish in the United States, unless you are Orthodox, the odds are quite high that your children are not receiving any significant Jewish education. In my generation - and in my parents' generation - nearly all the Jewish kids who went to public school went to afternoon Hebrew school at least until their Bar/Bat Mitzva. That is no longer true today. Instead, we are producing kids who are Jewish in name only, the children of intermarriages, being 'led' by the only people they meet with any Jewish connection: Israelis who have turned on their own country (read the whole thing to see why I'm quipping about Israelis).

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:44 AM