How American Jews Have Detached Themselves from Jewish Memory

Elliott Abrams is clearly correct in asserting both that American Jews are moving away from support of Israel and that this tectonic shift is traceable much less to Israel’s policies than to the manner in which American Jews now constitute their worldview and their Jewish identities.

As it happens, I am somewhat more critical than Abrams of the policies (or lack of policies) pursued by the Netanyahu government. Admittedly, there are few if any good moves that Israel can make on the international chessboard these days; but the optics have been significantly worse than they could have been. Still, nothing one might say on this point diminishes the rightness, or the importance, of Abrams’ thesis: the root cause of the growing gulf between the world’s two largest Jewish communities lies in the way that most American Jews now conceive of themselves and their Jewishness.

The nature of the phenomenon is complex, but Abrams points to one significant dimension. He does so by citing the words of Lawrence Hoffman: “[T]he [mere] ethnicity of people without profound purpose is doomed.” How is such a sense of Jewish purpose communicated? Through, says Hoffman, “regularized ritual affirmations of the transcendent,” i.e., mitzvot. This worldview is central to most Orthodox Jews—who are also, overwhelmingly, devoted to Israel. It is much less central to the non-Orthodox world, which is not only much larger but (not coincidentally) drifting away.