July 22-28, 2004

loose canon

American Jews: Confused, Silent

by Bruce Schimmel

Here's a classic joke about Jews, a favorite among the wandering tribe: If eight Jews enter a room to talk, how many opinions will emerge? At least 10.

No surprise there. Jews are debaters by tradition. So, you'd think that a people who thrive on the bellowing of Old Testament prophets would have no problem opening their own mouths. But there, you'd be wrong.

When it comes to Israel, most American Jews are horribly ambivalent, and silent. Untangling this internal conflict is the goal of the Jewish Dialogue Group (www.jewishdialogue.org), a Philadelphia-based organization that borrows techniques from family therapy to foster political dialogue. In the past two years, the group has run more than 50 workshops. A couple of eight-person discussion groups recently met in the community room of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel near Rittenhouse Square and, for nearly three hours, we gently teased light out of confusion. It wasn't entirely a meeting of minds. Not at all. But it was a remarkably full airing of views, from which nobody left in tears.

That American Jews are generally in anguish about Israel may come as a surprise to those who imagine that Jewish opinion is monolithic, but that would mistake silence for consensus. Of which, on the topic of Israel, there is essentially none.

In a recent opinion poll of American Jews commissioned by the respected, New York-based Jewish American magazine Forward, the "unsure" faction appears to have won. Almost half the respondents were unsure whether settlements in occupied land make Israel safer; 39 percent said they don't know if the U.S. should avoid pressuring Israel; and on the facetious question of whether the U.S. should support Israel over the Palestinians, a full 30 percent couldn't decide.

So, while there are partisans clamoring from both ends of the debate, many American Jews — like most of their secular neighbors — are hopelessly mired in the middle. There's no such political timidity among Jews in Israel.

In the Knesset, Israel's parliament, there are more than a score of political parties engaging in a muscular democratic debate — an astonishing achievement for a nation at war — while on the other side of the world, with all the resources of the world's media at their fingertips, most American Jews in the middle are silenced by the ravings of the extremists.

A nation of Jews, and only two polarized opinions emerge? We can, all of us, do better.