America’s Jewish Tragedy

According to a survey by the Jewish Electorate Institute taken after the most recent round of Gaza fighting, 25% of respondents agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state” and 22% said that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.”

A more accurate re-enactment of what went on in the destruction of Jerusalem — with Romanized Jewish factions openly siding with the conquerors — is hard to imagine. But such is the advanced stage of American Jewry’s churban that among voters under 40, a full 20% agreed with the statement that “Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.”

The Tishah B’Av metaphor is not one that I use lightly. Precisely the wrong response is triumphalism. Yes, Orthodoxy is booming where others are fading. But there is not a shred of joy in witnessing the relentless assimilation of Galus America, the richest and most successful diaspora community since Golden Age Spain.

Rather, the comparison is a call for clear-eyed analysis of what will and won’t help. To a man holding a hammer, it’s said, everything looks like a nail. So it’s predictable that the responses so far from major Jewish groups have focused on improving performance in what these bodies already exist to do.