Growing Splits between Israeli Jewry and American Jewry

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Dear Companions,

I originally thought to include this assessment of Jewish changes as part of the “Preface” to “New Torah Now,” but I have concluded that it does not really belong in that book, but in a separate essay of the changes.

The main thing I want to make clear is that the enormous changes inside Israel and the separate changes inside the American Jewish community have resulted in deep splits between where Israeli Jewry and American Jewry are headed.

The book about “New Torah Now” will be focused on a new vision for a Prophetic Diaspora, which is why I think this assessment of changes does not quite belong in a book about my vision for American Jewry.

These are the changes I discern:

1. The Holocaust, almost wiping out the most intense center of observant and knowledgeable Jews.

2. Creation of a modern state with an army, navy, air force, and nuclear weapons with a majority of Jews in its population. 

3. The basic structure of the new State of Israel was shaped by Ashkenazic Jews from fairly democratic countries in Europe. They claimed to provide a democratic, multicultural state. But they responded to three aspects of the people they governed with measures that greatly weakened Israeli democracy:

Then came the immigration of large numbers of Soviet Jews who had little experience of a democracy or of Jewish tradition. 

The Ashkenazic ruling elite in Israel wanted to populate the State with as many Jews as possible, even if that meant weakening democracy. So it took strong measures to bring large numbers of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, but treated them as third-class citizens, not part of the “governed” whose consent was necessary. 

So these four great “problems” in the Israeli population weakened the “consent of the governed.” (That phrase from the U.S. Declaration of Independence had come to define democracy as a reality or a vision in many countries.)

Israeli society became more and more and more attuned to authoritarian practice.

4. In 1967 Israel conquered and occupied land that included millions of Palestinians whose families had lived there for generations. Till about 1980, there was a viable debate inside Israel about the conquered lands: Encourage the creation of an independent Palestinian state, or gradually absorb those territories into the State of Israel, encouraging hundreds of thousands of Israelis to settle there and subjugate the Palestinian communities by economic pressure and military violence. The result was not only undemocratic control of the Palestinians but also the drastic weakening of democracy inside Israel.

5. The safety, comfort, and ease of much of Israel’s population were deeply shaken and the ancient traumas of Jewish history were heated to the explosion point by a literally atrocious attack from some Palestinians on October 7, 2023.

6. Israel’s far-right government responded to this attack with vengeance and collective punishment of the Palestinian community in Gaza (and partly to avert public Israeli anger over the government’s own sloppiness and incompetence in failing to prevent the attack). 

The government instead turned the widespread frustration and anger after the attack into bloody massacres carried out by the State against the Palestinian populace of Gaza and encouraged violence carried out against Palestinians on the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

7. Meanwhile, the faces and sounds of American Jewish communal life and leadership were radically changing. But the changes were in the opposite direction from those inside Israel. In Israel, the changes had weakened democracy; in the United States, the changes strengthened elements that were struggling for more democracy.

Women and members of varied gay/queer communities emerged from 3,000 years of servitude and silence as full members, activists, and leaders in many American Jewish organizations.

The organized community discovered and often responded with recognition and honor to the presence of Jews of many colors.

Tens or hundreds of thousands of “intermarried” families gave birth to children whose attachment to Judaism was moral and ethical rather than memories of Poland.

And a very small group of Jews became extraordinarily wealthy — billionaires who sought to protect their wealth by cozying up to the most powerful people in Israel and the USA.

In addition to the increasingly active presence of these relatively easily defined Jews to the American Jewish community, there has been a cultural change that is harder to define but easy to feel: most American Jews have become “white.” That is, privileged in a way they/we were not in past American history. That may be changing, as white masculinist Christian nationalists gain power. But it has affected our memories and expectations.

8. A deep split on moral and religious grounds grew between the supporters of the actions of the government of the State of Israel — many with positions of wealth and power in American society — and those who took a much more critical stance toward its actions. 

9. The emergence of a sector of the American Jewish community that is committed to justice as a crucial value, both in Jewish organizations and in societies where Jews have enough power to make a political difference.

10. Recognition is growing among many Jews that Torah is itself a document of internal political struggle, in which deep moral and religious differences surface in different “political” actions. So Torah itself invites and requires political discussion and debate among Jews who love Torah and struggle to live by it. 

Now — back to my self and my soul. The Freedom Seder (1969). What is this “Freedom Seder?” It was an original and unprecedented inclusion of other modern, continuing, and unfinished freedom struggles in the Passover Seder. That addition did not weaken but came alongside the ancient struggle of the Godwrestlers against slavery to Pharaoh — it emphasized especially the Black American struggle against racism.

These experiences included a summer in Israel and visits with Palestinians, and shaped me into an even more, strongly justice-oriented Jew.

But I want to point out that this creative assertion came from a moment of desperation. I had been a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1968 in Chicago. I felt all my identities collapsed in fiasco at the DNC. Except one — memories of connection in songs and statements by Fannie Lou Hamer in 1964 and meeting an Army Jeep with a machine gun pointed at the foot of the block I lived on, as I walked home a week after Dr. King’s death to prepare the first night of Passover Seder. Those moments acted as seeds for me to grow the Freedom Seder. I hope that my despair in 2023 can similarly result in a flash of creativity as “New Torah Now.”

My personal evolution and the social evolution of American Jewry converged. I recognized myself as committed to help build a “Prophetic Diaspora.” 

And for me — and I hope for others — that means a new Torah that could and should guide American Jews, and perhaps others, during the 21st Century of the Common Era. 

One thing I learned after the Freedom Seder was to think about “prophetic process” with the help of wisdom and a metaphor from chemistry: If you have a super-saturated solution and drop into it a single crystal, the whole solution will crystallize. 

In retrospect, that’s what happened with the Freedom Seder. There were enough Jews who were thirsty for a new kind of seder without even knowing that’s what they thirsted for, for them to respond in thousands when a new kind of seder came along. The question now is whether a new kind of Torah will act as a crystallizing energy for thousands who are facing a government working to turn the USA into an ultra-conservative Christian nation. 

Changing what we learn as Torah will not come swiftly or easily, but it is absolutely necessary if liberal forms of Judaism are to survive.

With blessings of resilience, love, and shalom

— Arthur

Follow me on Substack at RebArthurWaskow.Substack.com