Serious Splits : Jews in U.S. Committed to Equality

Irving Howe, author of “World of Our Fathers,” a classic on American-Jewish life, was nearly prevented from speaking in Beverly Hills last month.

Historian, distinguished man of letters, gentle champion of social democracy, Howe was moved from reason to rage: “It is a shandeh and a charpeh (shame and scandal) that Jews would come to a meeting of Jews and try to prevent them from speaking,” he shouted, as an angry band of hecklers attempted to drown out his words by chanting slogans through bullhorns and holding placards against the loudspeakers beside the speakers’ platform.

Others tried to storm the stage and, in the end, the right of this Jew to speak to other Jews was assured only by a line of policemen.

Near-Riot in Park

Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills seemed an unlikely spot for a Jewish riot, but it almost happened one sunny Sunday last month, when supporters of the Israeli group Peace Now attempted to hold a rally featuring Howe, Israeli author Yael Dayan and actor Richard Dreyfuss.

On the stage were Jews from Israel and America who back Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s plan for an international conference on Mideast peace, a position that 61% of American Jews favor and only 17% oppose, according to a Los Angeles Times Poll published Tuesday.

The hecklers also were Jewish; there were yarmulkes on the heads of some and Purim noisemakers twirling in the hands of others.

An advertisement in the B’nai B’rith Messenger had suggested that people bring the noisemakers, called groggers. They are a traditional feature of the Purim holiday, which commemorates the Jews’ deliverance from a general massacre plotted by Haman, evil minister to a 5th Century BC Persian king. (“Drown out the Hamans--bring your own grogger,” the ad said.)

‘Not an Inch’

The hecklers feel strongly that Peace Now, which has many heroes of the Israel Defense Forces in its front ranks, is betraying the Jewish state. They oppose any pressure on Israel to negotiate and chanted, “Not an inch,” when the possibility of trading land for peace was raised.

Most of the audience of about 1,000 had come to hear the Peace Now speakers and seemed sympathetic to their message. They clearly were unprepared for the hecklers’ hostility.

“They are not Jews as I think of Jews,” one Jewish UCLA sociology professor said, pointing to the hecklers.

“They are self-hating Jews,” said Rabbi Julian White, the local president of Americans for a Safe Israel, pointing to Howe, Dayan and the other speakers on the stage.

Dayan, daughter of Moshe Dayan, who won the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for Israel in the Six Day War, was equally disdainful of the hecklers. “Keep them in Beverly Hills,” she said. “If more of them come to Israel, they will destroy the state.”

The near-riot at Roxbury Park could be taken as a microcosmic window on the mind of American Jewry. But so, too, could the 1,000 Jews who quietly gathered to hear the distinguished Israeli statesman and Labor Party politician Abba Eban, when he spoke last Sunday at Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach.

Eban, currently chairman of the Israeli Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, received a standing ovation from the full house after a speech that praised the U.S. peace proposals and hailed Secretary of State Shultz as “the best friend Israel ever had.”

Eban Applauded

He was applauded when he defended the media’s right to witness and report on disturbances in the occupied territories and the right of American Jews to criticize Israeli government policies.

Eban was also cheered when he made this observation about the current confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians: “We are the predominant military power. That doesn’t mean to say that we should use words of arrogance and contempt, and I’m not going to tell you that our neighbors are either flies or grasshoppers,” as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir did recently, when he compared Palestinians involved in the uprising to grasshoppers.

“Once you start comparing your adversaries to insects,” Eban warned, “you are rehearsing the rhetoric of extermination. You are dehumanizing that which is--despite the depth of our conflict--an intra-human tragedy and an objective conflict between rival claims. And the fact that such words come from such high places indicates how deeply (Israel’s) values have been affected by this unresolved issue.”

Which Is Real?

So, which is the real American Jewish community--the 1,000 who nearly came to blows in Roxbury Park or the 1,000 who studiously hung on Eban’s scholarly exposition?

The answer, according to the exhaustive Times Poll and a lengthy series of follow-up interviews, is both. As the Times survey indicates, most Jews continue to embrace a tolerant, democratic spirit as essential to their survival, as well as to a generally healthy society.

There are serious splits within the American Jewish community; the Times poll discloses a profound fragmentation of attitudes. There is, however, no clear polarization, as the events in Roxbury Park would seem to suggest.

Jews do not easily cluster--except around complexity. An accurate survey of their views evokes a melange of conflicting emotions, political goals, religious attitudes and ethical views that go directly to the ancient and perhaps unanswerable question: What makes a Jew?

It is not simply support for Israel, although many Jews feel closely connected with that country’s future. But, despite all of the emotionalism that issues involving Israel seem to arouse, it is surprising that in the Times poll only a small minority of Jews (17%) cited support for Israel as the quality most important to their sense of Jewish identity.

Compared to North Ireland

“I am Jewish, but that doesn’t mean Israel is the most important thing,” observed Jerrold Cohan, 49-year-old father of two bar-mitzvahed children and resident of a Chicago suburb that is about 40% Jewish. Cohan worked off and on in Israel as a consultant between 1968 and 1973, attempting to develop cottage industries on the West Bank. He thinks the Israeli-Palestinian problem is an insoluble one, which he--like a number of those interviewed--compared to the intractable situation in Northern Ireland.

“Those are my people,” he says of the Israelis. “I feel for all of them. It’s terrible, but frankly I think most things are more important. It’s not an isolated incident in the world--look at Ireland or the Sikhs.”

Cohan’s last three trips to the Middle East, as a tourist, have been to Egypt, not Israel. He is for negotiations, but, as with virtually every Jewish-American interviewed, Cohan added the caveat, “as long as Israel’s security is guaranteed.”

Cohan’s Jewish identity is not rooted in a preoccupation with Israel nor is it a matter of religious conviction or observance. And here, too, he is typical of the majority. In the Times poll, only a small percentage (17%) mentioned religious observance as the most important characteristic of their Jewishness.

In fact, the quality cited by half the Jews polled is “a commitment to social equality.”

Didn’t Like Israelis

That was the choice of Janet, a 39-year-old who has visited Israel and said she didn’t particularly like the people she met there or the Israelis she has since encountered in her home town of Los Angeles. Janet, who asked that her last name not be used, says religious practice is a part of her life, and she attended synagogue services about three times last year. But “the culture is more important than the religion--the traditions, the sense of belonging to a group.”

Janet’s personal “commitment to social equality” leads her to draw analogies between the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinians and the treatment of American blacks prior to the civil rights movement. But Isaac Shohan, who also lives in Los Angeles and also told the Times poll that he values a “commitment to social equality” above all other attributes of his Jewishness, disagrees.

Veteran of Four Wars

“They are not civilians. All of the Palestinians living there are soldiers,” said Shohan, who also does not share Janet’s rather dim view of the Israeli personality, being an immigrant from there himself. The 22-year veteran of the Israeli army and four wars has lived in the San Fernando Valley for 13 years.

Shohan’s views, once again, are not simple. He can be tough, as when he says the crackdown on the West Bank protests should have come more quickly and decisively. Nor is he tolerant of any criticism by Americans of the Israeli leadership. “All of us (his Israeli immigrant friends in the United States) support Israel no matter what is happening there. That’s our first priority--no matter what the (Israeli) government does.”

But, a half hour into the discussion, Shohan indicates that he personally has many criticisms of Prime Minister Shamir’s handling of things and that he and most of his acquaintances would vote for the Labor Party and Shamir’s rival, Shimon Peres.

Shohan is strongly opposed to negotiating with the Palestine Liberation Organization now, because that organization does not accept Israel’s right to exist, he says, but he is eager to negotiate territorial compromises that would produce a durable peace.

“I wouldn’t say: ‘Never an inch.’ The Labor Party policy for many years has been to give up land for peace. I don’t say how much and where, but I know that they are willing to do it. Not to give an inch is very easy to say, but that is not going to take us anywhere.”

Not Rejecting Religion

But what, if anything, unites Isaac, the former Israeli soldier, and Janet, the Los Angeles County employee, when they both refer to “social equality” as the most important quality of their Jewishness? Neither is rejecting religion or Israel as an identifying quality, but they seem to be more devout about the religion and less narrow in their nationalism than might otherwise be the case. Both may have taken social equality--an option provided by the pollster--as a metaphor for pragmatism.

However they understood it, 50% of Jewish Americans told The Times that a “commitment to social equality” is the quality most important to their Jewish identity. Israel (17%) and religion (17%) are less often cited as the most important Jewish quality.

On the other hand, Rabbi Allan Schranz of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles objected to being asked to cite the most important Jewish quality. He said it was “reductionist” in that it asks people to focus on a single strand of a larger tapestry, which for him is the Jewish religion, which he believes encompasses all values. But which branch of the religion?

Not Fully Accepted

Schranz’s Conservative brand of Judaism encompasses at most a third of those who consider themselves to be Jewish. And he and his Reform Jewish colleagues are not fully accepted by their Orthodox co-religionists, who hold a monopoly on religious authority in Israel.

When asked if his reading of Jewish teachings guaranteed any rights of civil disobedience to the Palestinians, Schranz said none that the Israelis would be bound to respect under the present circumstances, including the right of Arab shop owners to strike and shutter their stores.

Reform Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, on the other hand, answered the same question this way: “Civil disobedience is perfectly justified. I can’t justify forcing people to have their stores open.”

And Orthodox Rabbi Abner Weiss of Beverly Hills said his understanding of Jewish teachings leads him to believe that “ultimately it was in the authority of the sovereign state to take whatever emergency measures are considered to be effective in order to restore the peace.”

How significant are these differences among rabbis in the formulation of the Jewish community’s thinking? According to the Times poll, perhaps not very. Three-quarters of the Jews surveyed said that they do not attend Sabbath services even once a month.

For Ross Elkin of Marin County, Calif., religious practice means gathering once a year with 35 people for a Passover Seder at a friend’s house. Few of them, he said, ever attend synagogue services.

Trees for Israel

Elkin grew up in the ‘50s and, like most of the others at last week’s Seder, he had, as a child, donated money to plant trees in Israel. “I always felt more a part of the culture than the religion. I believe in God; I’m not an atheist, but I don’t believe in the whole hierarchy of prayer,” he said. “Jewishness is more cultural than religious.”

Elkin said most of the people with whom he celebrated Passover favor negotiations to bring about a Mideast peace and are troubled by the violence in the occupied territories. He used to think that the status quo was in Israel’s favor but now thinks the opposite is true and has an “increased sense of Israel’s vulnerability.” He would favor negotiations with the PLO but only if it clearly accepts Israel’s right to exist.

Eighty-two percent of American Jews told The Times that being Jewish is important in their lives. Yet a majority, like Elkin, do not belong to any Jewish community organization.

One of those who does belong to such a group is about-to-be-16-year-old Roey of Beverly Hills. He is affiliated with a Conservative synagogue, is learning Hebrew and has been to Israel four times on organizationally sponsored tours. He is dead set against any public criticism of Israel or concessions of land, but he, too, is troubled by the course of events.

“It’s not such a good thing happening. People are getting killed. They should find a way to solve it, but not by giving back land.” Like many Jews, he blames the American mass media for not putting the disturbances in Israel in a historical context of Arab intransigence and refusal to accept Israel’s existence.

Wants Violence Ended

His grandparents live in Israel, and he feels strongly that the people of that country should be trusted to make all necessary decisions through their government. Roey thinks “something should be done” to end the violence, but he’s not sure what that something is.

Like many Jews, 89-year-old Irma, who emigrated from Poland in 1920 and sends money to her husband’s family in Israel, expressed concern for the plight of the Palestinians.

“My views are not one-sided,” she said. “I feel very sorry for the Palestinians. It is a terrible situation. The media has exaggerated things but has not caused the problem.”

She is concerned over the fact that Israeli Arabs, who she thought accepted Israel, are now joining in the protests. She is suspicious of any further swaps of land for peace, citing the exchange with Egypt, which she thinks has proven less than satisfactory. But if land for peace will work, she’s all for it.

She has been to Israel and finds it “too tense. My husband’s family is in Israel, I was there some time ago, I don’t want to go there. I could, but I don’t want to. I just don’t have that overriding love for the land that other people have.”

Polling the Irmas of this world is not easy, for the hallmark of her intelligence and sophistication is her complexity. There wasn’t a question that the Times’ pollsters had asked with which Irma was happy.

Family Perished in War

Irma is Jewish. On that she is clear because for 89 years the world has not let her forget it. “I am very Jewish. I wouldn’t be anything else. But it’s not my achievement; I had nothing to do with it. We are safe here in the United States. My family perished in Europe in the war. I am Jewish. I fulfill my obligations. I have an obligation to my people. But I am not religious at all. I don’t belong to any religious organization, but I am Jewish.”

Irma’s ability to blend an unshakable commitment to Israel’s security, a cool attitude toward religiosity and a concern for the human dimension of the Mideast conflict is fully within the mainstream of American Jewry’s common experience, as measured by the Times poll.

One of the anomalies of that American-Jewish experience is that there probably is a larger proportion of Jews than non-Jews who actively argue the case for Palestinians’ rights.

One of them is Los Angeles architect Steve Kerpin. “Any kind of oppression of peoples anywhere in the world by anyone is a crime, and that’s what’s happening in the West Bank today,” he said. His Jewish mother was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the 52-year-old Kerpin, who grew up in a Bronx housing development, said, “I am Jewish; I feel it. If someone called me ‘a dirty Jew,’ I would break their ass; I accept the identity.”

Unacceptable Behavior

But, for Kerpin, existence of anti-Semites does not excuse what he considers unacceptable Israeli behavior: “It’s so ironic to see that in Israel they have turned against a people the way Jews have been turned against in history.”

Kerpin concedes that his views of Israel are not in the mainstream of American Jewish thought. On the other hand, The Times found that about the same percentage of Jews (27%) as non-Jews (24%) feels Israel’s foreign and domestic policies have become less acceptable over the last several years.

Similarly, although just under half the Jews surveyed believed that any criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is, in fact, anti-Israel, 38% did not. On the issue of whether Jews have a right to make their own criticism of Israel public, the community is evenly split.

Affiliation with the Orthodox, Conservative or Reform movements does not predict how a Jewish-American will come down on these questions.

For example, Schindler, head of the Reform movement, was the first prominent Jewish leader to denounce Israel’s crackdown on the Palestinian uprising. Reform Rabbi Marvin Gross, director of the Middle East Commission of the Jewish Federation in Los Angeles, agrees with some of Schindler’s views on the issue but thinks such criticism should not be made publicly.

“I don’t believe that most of the Jews whom I’ve heard issue public criticism of Israel at this point want to destroy Israel or want to hurt Israel. They want to help it, “ he said. “But I think that publicly issuing that criticism is only fuel for those who want to destroy Israel. I don’t want to be in league with the people who say that Israel is racist, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel is illegitimate.”

Element of Racism

(Forty-one percent of the Jews polled by The Times, however, believe there “is an element of racism involved in the attitudes of Israelis toward Arabs.”)

Orthodox Rabbi Jack Simcha Cohen, vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, was more caustic in his criticisms of Schindler’s action: “The overwhelming majority of the Jewish community believes that American Jewish leaders should not publicly criticize Israel at the present time, feeling that it is a form of inciting to danger when your people are really being criticized by the world at large.”

The opposite view was offered by Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, the liberal Jewish magazine. “American Jews,” he said, “should reaffirm their right to be heard and boldly reject the attempt by the Israeli or American Jewish Establishment to convert them into Jews of silence.”

State Over-Idealized

Schindler explains the evolution of his own views this way:

“There was a tendency in the beginning years of the establishment of the state of Israel by Jews to over-idealize the state--to have expectations which were almost messianic in their very nature. What did we expect of the state at the time? No 1: a place of haven and refuge for Jews. I think this was and continues to be a magnificent aspiration. Here our expectations were fulfilled.

“But, then we had expectations beyond this. We thought that Israel would become the fulfillment of our ideal vision: We would finally be authorized to carry guns, but we wouldn’t have to use them. That expectation was unreasonable because, living in a world of force, if Israel had not used its guns the Jews would be swimming in the Mediterranean right now. Nonetheless, the use of that force gives Jews a great deal of trouble, and then, if it becomes an excessive use of force, it becomes totally unacceptable.

“I have to admit that our expectations were too great. We had no right to expect it. There’s no state in history that has fulfilled the messianic expectations of its founders. Is India today what Gandhi wanted it to be?

“Our view of Israel over the years has become more realistic, not over-idealized. I’m absolutely convinced that, if Israel had been weak and had had no army, there would be no Israel today. The Arabs would have thrown us into the sea. There’s just no doubt about it.

‘Force Alone’ Is ‘Madness’

“At the same time, living in such a world, we have to recognize that the use of force alone is also madness, unless there is a balance between the use of force and political accommodation. They both have to be pursued. When one is done at the expense of the other, then there is an imbalance. Then the end is death and destruction.”

Rabbi White of Americans for a Safe Israel thinks Schindler’s views are those of a minority, but he concedes that there has been some erosion of support for his organization’s no-compromise position. “The riots, from the time they erupted and the treatment given the problem by the media, both print and electronic, have served to confuse a number of people and there have been surprises,” he said.

“The surprise has been that even with some degree of orchestration that the reaction (of Palestinians) would be as widespread as it turned out to be. Even the Israeli Arabs have caught some of that fire, as reflected in a day in which a strike was called in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and which was joined by the Israeli Arabs. I think that in the Jewish community there has been a greater recognition that the problem will not be as easily dealt with as perhaps it was thought before.”

According to White, the once unthinkable views of Rabbi Meir Kahane and others who advocate the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories are gaining currency. “Many people are coming out with the notion of population transfer, which was kind of swept under the carpet. Meir Kahane was considered a person whose name wouldn’t be mentioned for fear of what the reaction might be to his view on this very subject. Lo and behold, now we find that it’s not only Meir Kahane.”

For the time being, the Kahane position has only a small following among Jewish Americans and Israelis. In the Times poll, only 11% of American Jews favor a population transfer. A plurality (45%) favors increased autonomy for the Palestinians living in the occupied territories, but they are not at all clear on what that means. Only 31% approve trading land for peace and 29% favor creation of a Palestinian homeland.

Most, of course, believe that, whatever the solution, it must be provided by the Israelis themselves. But that will not be easy. As Abba Eban pointed out Sunday in Newport Beach, “Israel enters its fifth decade in deep confusion concerning our structure and our values.” That fact, he argued, has left American Jews in a state of “constructive disquiet.”

Times researcher Nina Green contributed to this article.

American Jews at-a-glance

Total Jews Pop. Percent of population 2.5% 100% Marital Status: Married 58% 54% Widowed 8 8 Divorced/Separated 6 10 Single 18 21 Political Ideology: Liberal 41 18 Middle-of-the-road 27 29 Conservative 17 30 Party Registration: Not Registered 8 22 Democratic 56 32 Republican 12 22 Independent 10 15 Age: Younger (18-40) 37 50 Older (More than 40) 57 47 Education: Dropout of H.S. 8 26 H.S. graduate 20 39 Some college 17 16 College Grad or more 47 17 Employment: In workforce 64 66 Not in workforce 36 34 Occupation: Not in workforce 1 2 Executive 4 2 Administrative 17 13 Owner 11 7 Professional 25 13 Technician 3 3 White collar 6 8 Sales 14 5 Skilled or semi-skilled labor 6 29 Unskilled labor 1 4 Don’t know 12 14 Income: Low (Less than $20,000) 10 29 Average ($20,000-$40,000) 23 35 High ($ More than $40,000) 47 25