The role played by the State of Israel is also much less important toWhy would the Holocaust be more meaningful to so many Jews as opposed to Israel? In an article in another context, Richard Baehr proposes 7 reasons to explain why the Left is estranged from Israel. Part of the problem is that Israel becomes identified with the US and what the Left opposes in it. As Tim Cavanaugh asks in connection to the protests on behalf of Darfur as opposed to the apathy for the plight of Iraq:
young Jews today, found the report. "The Holocaust continues to be
profoundly important to a broad spectrum of young Jews," it read, "yet
Israel appears to be much less important in positively affecting
Jewish identity."
The exception to the rule is the group of Jews who have either
traveled to Israel or who identify themselves as Orthodox, both "for
whom Israel has powerful positive resonance," it stated.
Why does it always seem like progressives support any intervention that clearly does not advance any American interests?This may be part of the issue we are facing in American Jews and their attitude towards Israel as well.
Meanwhile, a strong sense of identification with Israel by Orthodox Jews goes beyond the US. In Israel, the contributions of Orthodox Jews goes beyond their numbers. Caroline Glick notes that while religious Jews in Israel are 15% of the population, they constitute more than 30% of the combat soldiers of the IDF. They are a plurality of the cadets in combat officer training. They are a majority of most of the commando units.
It is tempting to see a close correlation between one's religiousity and one's identification with Israel.
Dr. Yitzchak Mansdorf, a writer and speaker who lives in Israel, conducted a survey in April 2004 and published the results in a report entitled "Knowledge and attitudes of post high school Jewish-American orthodox students in Israel available in PDF format. He later summarized the results in an article in The Jewish Week entitled Is Modern Orthodoxy the “great white hope” for the Jewish world? The results that Dr. Mansdorf finds are not what we would expect:
One world with which American Orthodoxy has not totally assimilated itself, however, is Israel. While Orthodox Jews appear to reflexively and enthusiastically support political positions that mirror the Israeli far right, this does not always appear to be out of an educated understanding of the issues involved. However zealous the American Orthodox community is in expressing this fervor, it falls short when it comes to effectively educating its youth in a fundamental aspect of the modern Jewish personality.Dedication to Judaism apparently does not automatically translate to dedication to Israel--but that of course will depend on how we define our terms. The issue, as defined in the article boils down to a basic finding that, "for many, Eretz Yisrael is a concept and not a reality that manifests itself in a thriving, problematic and challenging country called Israel." Dr. Mansdorf emphasizes that this is an issue that should not be confused with the question of making Aliyah:
What few dare to speak of publicly or admit is the relative failure of Modern Orthodoxy in America today to inculcate its youth with a functional and articulate Zionist identity. With some notable exceptions, the same youth that routinely profess undying love of "Eretz Yisrael" do not speak passable Hebrew, have little knowledge of contemporary Israeli society and do not have the skills or knowledge to effectively advocate for Israel.
An impressive percentage of these young adults eventually do make their way to Israel, where many spend a post-high school yeshiva year or two with, for the most part, the same peers with whom they have grown up. They have minimal exposure to "real" Israelis and leave the country without understanding what is written in a newspaper or broadcast on radio news. Their exposure to Israeli society is often limited to a 10-square-block area in downtown Jerusalem, where they learn which restaurants have the best steaks and which hotels their families prefer. They set themselves apart from Israeli youth not only by segregating themselves in dress, language and habits, but also in attitude. [emphasis added]
The difficult and often formidable choice to move to Israel is not the central issue here. Without understanding modern Hebrew, without knowing Israeli history and without understanding the social issues challenging Zionism today, young Jews will not be able to become meaningful participants in the future of the Jewish people.Not everyone agrees with the survey nor with the way it was formulated. There is an online forum of The Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora that discussed the survey around the time it first came out. A number of educators tackle the questions raised by the study head-on. One poster who saw the survey believes the questions were confusing and misleading; he also questions the criteria for deciding what constitutes basic Jewish knowledge. He points out:
In this generation, Modern Orthodoxy in America may be keeping the youth committed to religious Judaism. Whether or not this commitment will ever include seeing life in Israel as a priority as important as building a synagogue in America of Jerusalem stone, however, remains to be seen.
If they want to be activists they will read and study the facts as they need them. The question is whether students leave Israel more committed emotionally to Israel. This is certainly the case for most.One can question whether pro-Israel activists can acquire the tools they need by reading and study. Dr. Mansdorf has spoken as an advocate when he visits the US and obviously puts a great emphasis on being able to speak out competently for Israel and answer anti-Israel propaganda. Whatever questions you may have about how the survey was conducted, keep in mind that half of the respondents got the following question wrong:
5 Which one of the following fought for Israel in 1948?The educators outline some of the things they are doing to address the issue. While some in the forum question aspects of the survey--and according to page 2 in the actual survey that gives background information, there were some problems with it--the teachers in the forum consider the report to be an important warning.
a. Yitzchak Rabin
b. Bibi Netanyahu
c. Natan Sharansky
d. Ehud Barak
We should as well.
Crossposted at Israpundit
Excellent post, Daled. Look for my link.
ReplyDeleteYou quote that while “religious Jews in Israel are 15% of the population, they constitute more than 30% of the combat soldiers of the IDF. They are a plurality of the cadets in combat officer training. They are a majority of most of the commando units.”
ReplyDeleteWhy is it, and its not just here, that a particular segments of society is so often measured by how many combat soldiers it contributes to Tzahal. Why not measure a community commitment to Israel by counting how many passionate teachers, artists and thinkers it produces?
Ittay: Why not measure a community's contribution to Israel by counting how many of them learn in yeshiva and how many scholars they produce?
ReplyDeleteYou wrote:
ReplyDeleteCaroline Glick notes that while religious Jews in Israel are 15% of the population, they constitute more than 30% of the combat soldiers of the IDF.
Caroline Glick's use of statistics is based on completely bogus mathematics. See my post debunking her here.
I suppose that using the measure of enlist in Tzahal is because the willingness to put your life on the line for your country requires a special level of commitment, just as much is made of stories of soldiers who refuse to carry out orders to evacuate settlements--or refuse to shake their commander's hand, which is the point Glick addresses in her article.
ReplyDeleteAs for the math aspect, my eyes tend to glaze over when confronted with numbers. But is it possible that the 15% she mentions is based on another source?
The point is that the 15%-30% figure is mixing apples and oranges: that is, it's taking the 15% prevalence of national-religious Jews in the general population and comparing it to the 30% percentage of combat soldiers drawn from a subset of the population. In fact, just correcting for the population segments that don't serve in the IDF, the national-religious account for 22%, not 15%, of the IDF-serving population. (I'm assuming that Glick's 15% figure is accurate; it appears reasonable to me. Of course, nobody has precisely defined the boundary conditions for being "national-religious"!) And when we figure in family size (about 4.5 children per family for the national-religous, and half that for other non-Haredi Israeli Jews), it appears that the number of draftees from the national-religious community is at least 30% of the total pool of draftees, and possibly as high as 45% or so - meaning that the fact that 30% of combat soldiers are national-religious is just a reflection of who is in the draft pool, not of anything qualitatively special about the national-religious sector.
ReplyDeleteAll of which would be boring and not very important, except that Glick was deliberately using numbers (and the authority they convey) to try to make a point about the national-religious being superior to the rest of the population - a contention which is not supported by the numbers when they are computed properly. As something of a number-enthusiast (a nice euphemism, I think!), I hate to see numbers misused in this way; they give statistics and demographics a bad name.
I have a lot of problems with Caroline Glick's thinking in general; but as I said in my own post, I don't normally like to make my "living" as a critic. But statistics-abuse is my little pet peeve. I'm also more than a little fed up with hearing how settlers (myself excluded - I'm too much of an Alfei Menashe apikoros) and other national-religious types are so virtuous, so heroic, and so wonderful in general; it's clearly a tactic designed to strengthen the settlement enterprise, but in my opinion it's actually very harmful, in that it causes much more resentment than admiration.
I share in your frustration. It is even more pathetic... many American Orthodox Jews seem to be giving up on Israel...
ReplyDeleteThe survey seemed to indicate a weakness in background knowledge, not necessarily apathy.
ReplyDeleteI hope you are mistaken.