Does Such an Entity as “the Jewish People” Still Exist?

Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy don’t mince words in their account of the divisions within the Jewish people today. They know everything the pessimists know, but it does not faze them. Looking on the bright side, they see signs, in some of the latest statistics, that both diaspora and Israeli Jews retain an intuitive sense of shared peoplehood, one that could serve as the foundation for a new institutional bulwark against the corrosive tendencies the authors wish to combat. And they make a strong case that a “Jewish People’s Council” could not only accomplish this purpose but could also help to develop solutions to some of the Jews’ most pressing problems.

Many obstacles stand in the way of the implementation of the authors’ proposal, but no one should dismiss Sharansky and Troy as being unrealistic, especially in light of the former’s own legendary success in beating improbable odds. The most useful response to their essay would therefore be a practical one: advice on how to organize the Council. If I had any expertise in that area, I’d call upon it now. But since I don’t, I’ll have to do what comes more naturally to me, and air a few reservations.

I wonder, to begin with, whether Sharansky and Troy aren’t making too much of responses to survey questions that affirm a common Jewish destiny. Personally, I suspect that a large percentage of the people who check the right box often do so without much ardor. In what are they deficient? In The Road to September 1939, Jehuda Reinharz and Yaacov Shavit report that some of the chief Zionist delegates to the 1939 British-led talks about the future of Palestine couldn’t afford to hire a limousine to St. James Palace, where the discussions were to begin. So David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Shertok, and Nahum Goldmann hailed a taxi. The driver “muttered as they got off: ‘Zol zayn mit mazel!’ [best of luck!]”