Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu . . .

Dear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

I was invited to the party Aish HaTorah is throwing in your honor. All of Los Angeles was invited. But it is not my place and, frankly, I am not in the mood for a party. I am sorry about that, but I am more aggrieved about the deepening divide between American Jews and your government.

Those of us who have worked tirelessly on behalf of Israel, seeking to deliver through our efforts the United States’ economic and military backing for the Jewish state, feel abandoned and spurned by you. You may not intend that result by your trifling with our proud Jewish identity, but the facts speak for themselves.

Take the Aish HaTorah party. You are coming all the way from Jerusalem to Los Angeles for an affair sponsored by an Orthodox organization. Since taking office, you have received many invitations to similar events hosted by the Conservative and Reform movements. Not once have you stepped foot in our synagogues or schools. Such refusals wound with deep pain.

You are breaking our hearts. We grieve over the chasm you are creating between Israel and the vast majority of American Jews who are affiliated with Reform and Conservative religious streams.

Not only that, but you are confusing and enraging the vast majority of our donors to our annual Jewish Federation campaign. Over the years we have taught the donors the truth about Jewish history. Our message has been clear: We are one people. We are bound together by a common heritage of faith and culture. What injures us in one place injures us in all places. When Israel is attacked, Jews in the diaspora bleed as well.

But Mr. Prime Minister, when you were overheard whispering into the ear of ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Yitzhak Kadouri that the Israeli left “have forgotten what it means to be Jewish,” or when you support legislation which will delegitimize Reform and Conservative Judaism in Israel, you are playing politics of the worst kind. It is a politics calculated to divide Jews instead of uniting them.

Your actions are hurting us here in Los Angeles and throughout the United States and Canada. When generous donors to our Jewish Federation campaign call and announce, “I’m stopping my support; I refuse to give to an Israel that does not respect me and my children as Jews,” the response to your mixing of politics and religion is palpable. It is costly to our local agencies, to the Jewish education of our children and to our ability to help needy Jews.

All of us, and all the bridges we have sought to build between us, are being torched by your current politics.

We are not fools. You cannot declare on one podium that you want our support and that you stand for Jewish unity, and then on another podium, sometimes on the same day, agree with those who contend that our rabbis are not fit to officiate at conversions and marriages or sit on religious councils in Israel. You cannot get away with talking the talk of Jewish unity while you side with ultra-Orthodox parties in pushing for Knesset laws that will turn the majority of North American Jews into second-class Jews.

We reject such forked-tongued antics.

We have important work to do as a united people. We need to enlighten our youth in America and in Israel about what it means to live and celebrate as knowledgeable Jews. We have thousands of Jews in Russia who need our rescue and to be absorbed into the Jewish state. We have the task of creating new and durable bonds between young Jews in the diaspora and in Israel, for it is to them that we will hand the future of the Jewish people.

While you are here in Los Angeles, announce that you are now supporting freedom for all Jewish religious streams and secular Jews in Israel, and that you will no longer be a bought man in the pocket of 23 Orthodox party votes in the Knesset.

We have the 50th anniversary of Israel’s statehoood to celebrate. Let’s be worthy of it. Have a heart, Mr. Prime Minister. Don’t be fooled by the Aish HaTorah party. Right now, most American Jews are not in a party mood.