Israel Just Made Engaging with Israel That Much More Difficult

My friend, colleague, and Hartman RLI hevrutah partner, Rabbi David Cohen, and I have spent the last four weeks presenting the Hartman Institute's Engaging Israel program to our respective congregants and other members of Milwaukee's Jewish community.  The  goal of  the Engaging Israel Project is to respond to growing feelings of disenchantment and disinterest toward Israel among an ever-increasing number of Jews worldwide by creating a new narrative regarding the significance of Israel for Jewish life.  So far it's been an extraordinary experience, but a challenging one nonetheless, as we've attempted to help how our participants reconcile their strongly held and beloved American values with traditional Jewish values as they all relate to Israel.  I think we've made some substantive, real progress.  

But now I wonder if all of our work is threatened with being undone.  Today, videos produced by Israel's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and distributed in key American cities have gone viral.  The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg has blogged about them (you can read his post and watch the videos here: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/netanyahu-government-suggests-israelis-avoid-marrying-american-jews/249166/and they are all over social media forums like facebook. The t.v. spots are aimed at Israelis who live here in America.  If you listen to the dialogue and watch the body language of the actors it's quite clear that the ads present a negative critique of the Jewish American experience. The Israeli Jew is imperiled by the non-Jewish religious and cultural milieu that surrounds American Jews who are seemingly either incapable or uninterested in responding to those influences. The message is quite clear:  if you're an Israeli living in America your Jewishness (and that of your children) is endangered.  

Other innuendos abound.  Israeli Jewishness is apparently richer, more profound and more pure that that of American Jewry.  That critique is an unfair, untrue and myopic description of American Jewish life.  The fact is, Israeli culture, both social and religious, is and continues to be deeply enriched by our Jewish culture here in America.   Just as we American Jews can learn much from our Israeli brothers and sisters - the importance of the Hebrew language and literature to Jewish life - is but one example that comes to mind, Israelis can learn much from us American Jews about religious pluralism and the paradigms we've developed for living a meaningful Jewish life in the face of modernity.  

Instead of validating the Judaism of Jerusalem and New York, Tel Aviv and Chicago, Haifa and Los Angeles, these cynical ads pit one against the other.  Most damaging and troubling they demean and devalue the American Jewish community.  They throw up one more impediment to American Jews reconnecting and engaging with Israel.  And speaking tahlis, they make my job and Rabbi Cohen's job that much more difficult.