Gary Rosenblatt, The Jewish Week, May 2007

If the Zionist dream came true and all Jews moved to Israel, would that be good or bad for the Jewish people?

For David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the Jewish state, and for many other Israeli leaders over the years, the ultimate goal of Zionism was to unite all of world Jewry to assure the strength of the country and protect the Jewish people from discrimination around the world.

But Gidi Grinstein, the founder and president of the Re’ut Institute in Tel Aviv, one of Israel’s leading think tanks, argues that the world has changed, as have Jewish priorities. He questions whether it is preferable for the diaspora to vanish and for world Jewry “to put all our eggs in one basket.”

“If we’re not careful we may get what we wish for,” he told some of the 350 participants in UJA-Federation of New York’s 90th anniversary mission to Israel last week.

Grinstein, Rabbi Donniel Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and John Ruskay, executive vice president and CEO of UJA-Federation, shared their visions and concerns about the changing Israel-diaspora relationship at a forum in Jerusalem called “Where Do We Go From Here?” during the five-day visit.

Though they approached the broad topic from different perspectives, they agreed that a “moment of truth” was at hand and that major changes were needed to preserve the future of a vibrant Jewish people.

To Grinstein, the key to Jewish survival over thousands of years has been “resilience,” the ability to adapt and create new societies outside of Israel after the destruction of the Temples and displacement from our homeland. Using 21st-century jargon, he spoke of the genius of Jewish “networks,” beginning with the minyan, which brings 10 Jews together for prayer, and of sharing a common text and narrative, along with Jews’ ability to reproduce a society wherever they found themselves.

“We need to take a new look at our narrative and change the priorities and hierarchies of values,” he asserted, calling for Jews to become “global leaders” by heightening the interaction between Israeli and diaspora Jews. That would mean having diaspora Jews living in Israel for a time, or at least visiting frequently, and for Israelis to live outside of the Jewish state before coming back to apply their acquired knowledge to improving the society.

The concepts of aliyah (literally going up to the land of Israel) and yeridah (going down, or leaving Israel) should become more fluid concepts, not loaded with judgmental connotations, Grinstein said, and Jews everywhere should focus on “rebuilding the network, building communities and connecting them.”

Rabbi Hartman, whose work at the Hartman Institute continues that of his father, Rabbi David Hartman, in stressing pluralistic values within Jewish study, stressed that the Jewish people today lack a sense of “we,” or shared values. Diaspora responses to crises in Israel show compassion but not a familial relationship, he said, asserting that “if we [in Israel] die often enough and loud enough,” it will bring support, but that is not a sufficient bond.

He noted that the majority of Israeli Jews see diaspora Jews only as potential olim, or immigrants. And most diaspora Jews have never been to Israel, he said, and do not appreciate that the Jewish state, for all its flaws, is the one place “where Jewish values meet the road,” where centuries of theory about life in a Jewish state are put into practice.

First must come recognition that “the emperor has no clothes,” that true Jewish peoplehood does not exist, and only then can there be an authentic effort to restore it. Rabbi Hartman said that most Jews today do not necessarily want to be part of a “we,” and that the challenge is to learn and grow together “not because we’re forced to but because we want to embrace” our common ties.

Both Rabbi Hartman and Gidi Grinstein emphasized that North American Jewry should apply its standards of tolerance, openness and accountability to Israeli society. “If we cannot live up to your level of performance and transparency,” Grinstein said, “we don’t deserve your generosity.”

Such comments are particularly noteworthy at a time when Israel has been rocked by a series of political scandals that have implicated the prime minister, president and other top officials, and by a sense that corruption has eroded many aspects of the society.

John Ruskay, the third speaker on the platform, focused on the need “to build Jewish life based not on guilt but on opportunity,” instilling a sense of caring among Jews, one for the other, around the world.

He echoed a theme of his work at UJA-Federation, that of creating “caring and inspiring communities” to strengthen the Jewish future through the power of shared values.

The presentations, and the subsequent exchanges among the panelists and with the audience, acknowledged that the Israel-diaspora gap is widening. But there was also a sense that leadership and the will to change could improve the situation.

What struck me from the fascinating session was how little attention was given to the notion that Jewish peoplehood, and Jewish survival over millennium, was grounded in Judaism, the religion of the Jews. Whatever other factors contribute to a shared sense of heritage and destiny among Jews, surely the belief in a covenantal relationship between God and the nation of Israel, as set out in the Bible, has been the cornerstone of continuity for centuries.

Whether Jews can maintain, or renew, their sense of responsibility for each other remains to be seen. But surely the challenge for all of us, in Israel and throughout the diaspora, is to appreciate and strengthen the ties between us out of love, not guilt — whether we call those ties networks, peoplehood, caring communities or Klal Yisrael.