American Jewry Will No Longer Be the Center of the Jewish World

In late fall 1940, as World War II raged in Europe and despite the parlous situation of the Jews in British-Mandate Palestine, their leader David Ben-Gurion spent three and a half months in the United States, returning again in November 1941 for a far longer stay of more than nine months. The wartime route from Palestine to the U.S. was lengthy and dangerous, but Ben-Gurion keenly understood not only the prime importance of relations with America but also the fact that the American Jewish community had now become the center of world Jewry.

Indeed, soon enough—and for decades to come—that same Jewish community, the world’s largest and strongest, would play a critical role in the establishment and subsequent support and protection of the first Jewish state in 2,000 years.

But that was the 20th century; the 21st will be different. That is the conclusion of my essay in Mosaic, “If American Jews and Israel are Drifting Apart, What’s the Reason?”