Yair Sheleg, The A.B. Yehoshua Controversy, (American Jewish Committee publication), pp59-60

The statements made by author A.B. Yehoshua at an American Jewish Committee conference in the United States should not have surprised anyone. Since he denies having said that Judaism outside of Israel is not viable, he effectively merely reiterated his long-standing theory that Jewish existence in the Diaspora is partial, while only Jewish existence in Israel is total existence, in which every facet of one’s Jewish identity can find expression.

In any event, he claims that the anger directed at him stemmed not from his rejection of the significance of Jewish life in the Diaspora, but from his very statement that life in Israel is preferable.

Among other things, those who were angry at Yehoshua rehashed the old argument over “rejecting the Diaspora,” a central tenet of Zionist history. It is, shamefully, true that “rejecting the Diaspora” turned into “rejecting Diaspora Jews”—scorn for and arrogance toward Jews who were living outside of Israel, as if they were barely human.

But this fatal error, and the need to cultivate unarrogant brotherly relations with Diaspora Jews, does not mean that the ethos of “rejecting the Diaspora” was wrong per se, or that Yehoshua was wrong in claiming that from the point of view of Jewish identity, life in Israel is preferable. The sabra arrogance of the past should not be replaced by self-abnegation in the present.

In truth, these “rating games” are superfluous and divert attention from the urgent need to jointly cultivate a Jewish identity and face up to its challenges. But when Jewish leaders in the Diaspora continue to jeer at the presumption of Israel’s centrality, they ought to be presented with a few questions on this issue—for instance, regarding the decision by most Western Jews not to immigrate to Israel. Yehoshua correctly wrote in the past that today, when virtually no Jew is forcibly barred from immigrating to Israel, the decision not to immigrate casts a heavy shadow on the Jewish people’s claim of eternal loyalty to its historic homeland.

This is not just a Zionist question.

The decision not to immigrate also casts doubt on whether Diaspora Jewry is truly willing to deal with what it ostensibly defines as its existential problem: assimilation.

After all, for all the problems with Israelis’ relationship to Jewish tradition, immigration to Israel is still surely the simplest and most effective way to cope with the problem of assimilation.

Nevertheless, most Diaspora Jews choose not to immigrate, and thereby testify that even if they are genuinely troubled by assimilation, their personal comfort is more important to them. This choice affects not only the question of immigration to Israel, but also internal Jewish issues. It is reflected, for example, in the reluctance of many Jewish leaders worldwide to speak openly against intermarriage, out of fear that this will generate tension with their non-Jewish environment.

It is also reflected in the opposition of most of the American Jewish establishment to President Bush’s proposal that the federal government subsidize religious education. Even though it is clear that such subsidies could significantly reduce the cost of Jewish schools, which are currently very expensive, and thereby attract many additional students to them, this opposition stems from fear of future ramifications of any change in the hermetic separation of church and state.

One can understand this fear for the future, but in a situation where only 29 percent of American Jewish children receive a daily Jewish education, and given that Jews also manage to live in countries where there is no separation of church and state, the rejection of Bush’s proposal looks a bit like self-indulgence.

Historically, Jewish existence was based on the clear decision that for all the Jews’ (positive) desire to integrate into their environment, such integration would be only up to the point where it began to endanger Jewish identity.

Today, the pyramid has been inverted: Even most Jews who are interested in a Jewish identity are willing to invest in it only to the degree that it does not endanger—or even raise the specter of doing so in the future—their integration into society. Without a strategic re-inversion of this hierarchy of values, it is doubtful that all the projects, resources, and energy of many good people will be of any avail—and Jewish identity is liable, in the best case, to become a pleasant ethnic folkway, if it does not disappear entirely.

May 22, 2006
Ha’aretz
Reprinted with permission of Ha’aretz and the author.