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[The Diaspora Hits Back]
[The Return of the Two Center Model?]
[New Model - Israel as a Panacea for Diaspora Ills]
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The
Zionist Century - Concepts - Israel Diaspora Relations
Israel-Diaspora Relations
PART I
Zionism and the West
Dynamics of Tension
In Zionism's formative years, at the end of the nineteenth century and the
beginning of the twentieth, the western diasporas were still in the process
of formation. The English-speaking countries gained the bulk of their Jews
at precisely the same time that the Zionist Jewish community in the Yishuv
was developing, and for similar reasons - the desire of millions of Eastern
European Jews to leave their lands of birth. The majority of western Jews
were themselves immigrants or children of immigrants in their new host countries
and were hardly confident of their position in their new lands. They were
still in exile to a large extent; they hardly felt themselves to be at home.
By the seventies and eighties, however - two generations later - the
position had substantially changed. The Jewries of the West - and especially
North American Jews - had become socially confident, elite groups, proud
of their many achievements and with a feeling of power and acceptance
in the countries where they lived. Most of them felt a strong sense of
belonging, and did not feel like outcasts or parasites, nor did they feel
powerless. To a very large degree they felt themselves to be home: for
many of them, the Promised Land was where they were, not where they were
not - in Eretz Yisrael. They considered themselves very strongly to be
in diaspora: Zionism still treated them as if they were in Galut.
Moreover, many of the new generation of active Jews felt that they were
prepared to help Israel, and had done so, in important ways: either financially
- in the tradition of their parents - or politically, using their skills
and their knowlege of their country's govermental process to lobby on
Israel's behalf. People like these, who believed that they were contributing
through their financial power and their skills to Israel, were not prepared
to accept the rather patronizing attitudes of classical Zionism as voiced
by the leaders and spokespeople of the Jewish state.
More than that: many felt that, in certain crucial ways, they could
do a better job than the Israelis in managing and administrating the funds
raised by diaspora Jewry on Israel's behalf. Their money was accepted;
their political help was accepted, but their attempts to offer advice
to Israel were generally rejected or at best heard out only reluctantly.
Even as this process was still in the formative stage, the spokespeople
for Zionism were increasingly confident of their position. Originally
mapped out by classic Zionist ideologists, it had been strengthened by
two major events - the Holocaust on the one hand and the existence of
the sovereign State of Israel on the other.
For many Zionists, the Holocaust proved the correctness of their world
view which perceived life in Galut as the prelude to a tragedy. Zionists
were of course mortified by the size of the Holocaust - but they had been
predicting tragedy for Galut Jews for years. Moreover, the presence of
the State of Israel, which could act unopposed to save the troubled Jewries
of the world, proved that there were now alternatives to the Galut fate
predicted by many Zionists. Jews should - and could - come to Zion and
save themselves.
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The Diaspora Hits Back
A clash between the two different groups moving in different ideological
directions was inevitable: at a certain point, diaspora Jews were bound
to speak out with new voices - voices of belonging, that would deny that
they were second-class Jews just because they did not live in Israel.
This process started a decade or so ago, when some of the leaders of
American Jewry began to answer back. They rejected the right of Zionist
spokesmen to relegate them to a second-class position. Israel was indeed
central to the Jewish world. But so were they.
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The Retrun of the Two Center Model?
They rejected the idea of being inherently inferior in any way to the Jews
of the State of Israel, by virtue of their geographical location. The suggestion
started to be voiced that - just as there had been two Jewish centres co-existing
side by side in Babylon and Eretz Yisrael in the Talmudic period (third
to fifth or sixth century CE) - the same situation could be said to exist
today with the United States taking the place of Babylon in the two-centers
model.
This claim was strengthened by another perception - a growing feeling
among large sections of that part of diaspora Jewry actively involved
in Jewish life - that there was a widening gap between Zionist vision
and reality. Although Israel and Zionism were in theory important indeed,
the reality of life in Israel fell somewhat short of the dream that the
purveyors of Zionism had sold to the public.
Problems in Israel - political, social and religious - seemed to suggest
that Israel was another Jewish community, albeit clearly major and clearly
different, that was in trouble: enthusiasm dwindled.
Political arguments developed in Israel spilled over into the diaspora
arena. There was dissension about the advisability of openly criticising
Israel in an open international forum, such as that of the diaspora countries,
but it could not be denied that there were, indeed, problems in Zion.
Moreover, the new generation of young American Jewish leaders differed
from their parents in another important way: they had not witnessed a
world without a Jewish state and had not felt for themselves the price
that the Jews had paid in the 1930's for the lack of a state. Nor had
they known the early days of struggle in the new Jewish state when Israel
seemed to be facing an endless uphill struggle against heroic odds to
survive and put herself on the permanent map of nation states. Many did
not even remember the threat against Israel's existence that preceded
the 1967 Six Day War: they had not thrilled with pride - as had many of
their parents - in the aftermath of that war, as the myth of the Superjew
- the new Jewish fighter - had caused much of diaspora Jewry to walk with
a new pride in their native lands.
This was a Jewry whose knowledge of Israel's war was more likely to
be the Lebanese war which caused intense controversy within Israel itself
and was a source of pride for very few. This was a Jewry who knew the
reality of the intifada, portrayed by most of the international media
as a David and Goliath scenario - with Israel in the role of Goliath.
This was a generation which tended to see Israel without illusions: indeed,
for many of them, there was a feeeling that their own Jewish life was,
if anything, superior to the life of the Jews in the Jewish state.
In addition, there were growing reservations about the sort of Judaism
developing in Israel - a strictly orthodox Judaism that did not recognise
the validity of other non-orthodox streams: non- orthodox conversions
were coming under increasing fire in Israel; pronouncements from mainstream,
orthodox circles in Israel were increasingly militant in their denunciation
of other forms of Judaism. It was a Jewish climate with which many leading
diaspora Jews felt increasingly uncomfortable.
Zionism had been saying for years that western Jewry could live a more
fulfilling life as Jews in Israel, but when many western Jews looked towards
Israel they were increasingly confronted with a reality in which they
felt disenfranchised: if this was the Jewish life that Zion had to offer
them, they saw no reason to be at all envious.
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New Model - Israel as a Panacea for Diaspora Ills
That was the story of the involved part of world Jewry, but there was another
important part of Jewry, uninvolved, assimilating, increasingly unaware
of, and indifferent to, organised Jewish life. For many of these people,
Israel was simply another place in the news. Many felt little - if anything
- for the Jewish state.
A number of years ago, something strange and interesting began to happen.
As the leaderships and elite groups of many western Jewries looked around
themselves, they started to notice the uninvolved and the assimilating
Jew. Suddenly, their voices could be heard proclaiming - like prophets
of doom - that Jewish life in the lands of diaspora was standing on the
edge of a chasm. A new watchword was coined throughout the lands of the
western diaspora - Jewish continuity: this was the priority of the day.
The outcome of this process was a new, hard look at the possibilities
of "saving" the Jewish future in the diaspora began to be taken.
All kinds of panaceas were proposed - including Israel. The opinion
was voiced that a visit to Israel, the so-called Israel Experience, was
a very good tool for strengthening the marginal Jewish identity in much
of diaspora youth. A new model of Israel diaspora relations - Israel as
a cure for identity problems, came to the fore.
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