U.S. Jews: A Dispute in the Diaspora

Just as Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir packs his bags for a Thursday meeting with President George Bush, we Jews are being disputatious again.

This time it’s not the old question of whether or not men and women should sit together in the synagogue or even the most recent argument about who is a Jew. (The best answer to that question may have come from Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Congregation Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, who said, “A Jew is someone who, after 4,000 years of history, is still asking ‘Who is a Jew?’ ”)

Today, unfortunately, the subject of our communal quarrel is Israel, an area of general Jewish agreement since the Six-Day War of 1967. Then, for a brief time, it seemed possible that the Arab states might successfully bring about a second Holocaust in our lifetime and even Jews for whom Israel had been of minor concern discovered emotional if not religious ties to that ancient and reborn nation.

Israel’s 1967 victory made believers out of doubters and virtually quelled dispute within the Jewish community on matters relating to policies of successive Israeli governments. Israel became, for many secular Jews, a legitimate way of asserting one’s Judaism, a non-controversial focal point for fund-raising and a unifying factor for Jews often divided on religious and social issues.

But within the last few years bitter disputes that rack Israel within also produce growing divisions among American Jews: the revival of fundamentalism in Orthodox Judaism and its attendant growth in political power; the question of how to deal with the Palestinians and their Arab allies, brought to the fore by an ongoing civil rebellion in the occupied territories, and Israel’s unfortunate invasion of Lebanon, including its subsequent involvement with various warring factions in that country,

The pages of Jewish newspapers are filled with these issues, pros and cons heatedly presented. Jewish organizational meetings are increasingly devoted to discussing these issues. And last month the government of Israel, uncomfortably aware of the divisions among American Jews--in fact, among Jews in most of the countries of the West--called an international Jewish Solidarity Conference in Jerusalem. The purpose was to reaffirm Diaspora support for Shamir before his meeting in Washington.

Sixteen hundred Jewish leaders from 42 countries--perhaps 25% of them from the United States, including about 50 from Los Angeles--convened for two days with the leaders of Israel’s coalition government. Many of them had expressed strong reservations about the purpose of the meeting, but after the sessions were concluded, all of them signed a statement expressing support for Israel’s struggle to survive without being explicit about any specific courses of action available to the prime minister.

The idea of the conference originated with Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, an Orthodox Jewish organization. Hier and the center are regarded here as being outside the mainstream of the community, largely because they do not coordinate programs with--or seek affiliation with--the Jewish Federation Council, an umbrella group for most of the organized Jewish community. Nor are many of the organizational leaders particularly sympathetic to Hier’s close relationship with Shamir and the Likud party, because of what they regard as an unnecessarily stubborn policy regarding the future of the occupied territories.

Nonetheless, when the call came from Jerusalem, much of the community leadership made the tiring journey--on short notice, despite doubts about the practical results and suspicions among some that they were being set up by Shamir as unwitting supporters of policies for which they have little sympathy.

Most of them returned home convinced that the journey had been worthwhile. They had ample opportunity, they reported, to meet with Israeli leaders, to tell them of their doubts about stonewalling on a settlement with the Palestinians and about aggravating the situation in the occupied territories by establishing new settlements in sensitive areas. And most agreed that the conference achieved one major result; it re-established, even among the most skeptical, unity in backing Israel among the Diaspora leadership after a long period of questioning and separation.

This is not to be confused with agreement on policy. Most American Jewish leaders were very comfortable with David Ben-Gurion, Abba Eban, Golda Meir and the other founders of Israel who led the Labor governments that ruled in Jerusalem for the first 29 years of Israel’s existence. It took them some time to warm up to Menachem Begin when he came to power in 1977 and they have never felt comfortable with Yitzhak Shamir, the veteran of years in Israel’s secret service, the close-mouthed, unsmiling, immovable champion of Israel’s current policy.

And agreement on support for the survival and security of Israel does not mean other areas of disagreement do not exist. The dispute over changing Israel’s Law of Return is merely postponed, pending Israel’s next elections when the ultra-Orthodox parties are expected to gain strength and return to the offensive on delegitimizing non-Orthodox converts to Judaism. The government insistence on not negotiating with the Palestine Liberation Organization, in the face of increasing pressure even from within Israel, is gradually losing support among mainstream Jewish leaders. Some of those leaders were meeting informally in Los Angeles with Faisal Husseini, the PLO spokesman on the West Bank, even as the Jerusalem conference was getting under way.

Purely coincidental of course, but the two meetings occurred on the Jewish holiday of Purim, the one day in the year when Jews are permitted, even encouraged, to satirize that which during the rest of the year must be treated with the utmost seriousness.