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May 2, 2002/Nisan 30, 5763 Vol. 55, No. 36
U.S.-Israel bond faces crossroads
RACHEL POMERANCE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Delight shot through the classroom of eighth-graders like a pogo stick gone wild.
The 35 students at the Heschel School on Manhattan's Upper West Side erupted the afternoon of April 28 with giddy comments and questions about the two-week trip to Israel they were about to begin the next morning.
"I'm ecstatic," shouted David Inkeles, 13. "It's very rare to get to go with all your friends to the desert in Israel for two weeks."
Elliot Sion, 14, said, "I feel sort of like we're messengers for the rest of the country," bringing American Jews' support to their brethren in Israel.
Such visceral connectedness to Israel is not so common among American Jews, a majority of whom - from 60 percent to 75 percent, according to estimates - have never visited the Jewish state.
However, American Jewish interest in Israel has soared over the last two years, as worry for the embattled state has joined with a new sense of vulnerability after Sept. 11.
American Jews' level of attachment to Israel is as great as he has seen in his 17 years as head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Malcolm Hoenlein.
As Israel Independence Day approaches on May 7, however, other Jewish leaders are voicing concern about the relationship between American Jews and Israel.
For one, the protracted Palestinian intifada, now in its 31st month, could have damaging effects.
The drop in American travel to Israel since the intifada began - a fall of 60 percent, almost all of which is assumed to be Jewish, according to Israel's Tourism Ministry - has lessened American Jews' physical connection to the land.
And some say American Jews have internalized the American trend toward an individual connection to God over a communal one, chipping away at the Jewish philosophy of peoplehood - a vital component of attachment to the Jewish state.
"There's a wide diversity of attachment to Israel" among American Jews, which is related to the number of times one has visited Israel and the strength of one's Jewish identity, said Steven M. Cohen, a demographer of American Jewry.
"The most engaged" - about 20 percent of American Jews - "are the most attached," Cohen said.
Another 40 percent represent "the vast Jewish middle," who care about Israel, but are not well-informed, he said.
The remaining 40 percent are unconcerned with either Judaism or Israel, Cohen said.
For Valley Jews, 93 percent of the respondents of the 2002 Greater Phoenix Jewish Community Study regard Israel as "an important communal concern." In addition, 66 percent believe that "all Jews should visit Israel at least once." How-ever, 39 percent claimed to have visited Israel.
Whether Israel is a "very important" aspect of Jewish identity depends upon age. Forty percent of the study's respondents agreed with this claim, but the figure dropped to 21 percent for those under the age of 50.
In addition, the Jewish respondents who have traveled to Israel are more likely to regard Israel as a "very important" part of their Jewish identity than those who have not visited Israel.
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, executive director of the Reform movement's ARZA/World Union, said the intifada has led to a short-term lift in support for Israel.
However, ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence is "depressing their physical involvement with Israel, and it's taxing their emotional energies in identifying with Israel," he said.
That's not the only toll the violence has taken.
According to Cohen, the intifada has eclipsed other areas where American Jews could advance their re-lationship with Israel.
"I think American Jews are overly, and understandably, focused on matters of vulnerability and are failing to engage more broadly with all that Israel has to offer religiously, spiritually, poli-tically and culturally," he said.
Jewish communal leaders agree that an emphasis on Israel in Jewish education is key to improving the connection noted that anti-Israel activity on college campuses has spawned counter-efforts by Jewish organizations to educate students about Israel.
Encouraging American Jews to visit Israel should be a chief concern of the community, since visiting the country creates a stronger Jewish community, said Barry Chazan, international education director for Birthright Israel.
"To not know Israel is to be deprived as an American Jew, to be deprived of a critical component of our Judaism," Hirsch agreed.
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