*At the height of the campus protests against Israel’s war
with Hamas, I recall one particular young Jewish female protester being
interviewed by a broadcast news reporter. She was asked why, as a Jew, she was
protesting the Jewish state. Her answer was quite revealing and went something like this:
I was raised in a typical pro-Israel home, where the Jewish
state was seen as a heroic nation that defeated its enemies, a country that
served as the antidote to global antisemitism. I was taught that Zionism was
rooted in justice, that Israel's founders dreamed of living in peace with their
Arab neighbors, and that Israel was meant to be a place where Jews and Arabs
could coexist in harmony - where antisemitism was no longer a threat.
She then added that her bubble was burst when she learned
what she was ‘lied to’. She now believes is the ‘truth’ about Israel’s founding
was completely at odds with what she had been taught. According to this new
perspective, the Jews had forcibly displaced the indigenous Arab population to
colonize the land.
And that following the Six-Day War, they began to treat
Palestinians in ways not unlike how Black South Africans were treated under
apartheid. The upshot of her revelation was the belief that Israel’s founders
were no different than the white supremacists who colonized South Africa,
segregating Black people into ghetto-like conditions and exploiting them.
My initial reaction to her response was that it wasn’t all that unusual. Many young Jewish students who were raised in pro-Israel homes are exposed to progressive academics in college who ‘educate’ them on what they claim is the real history. But there is more to the story.According to eJewish Philanthropy, which reported on two studies related to this issue:
“Young American Jews and the field of Israel Studies are facing dual ‘identity crises.’
”One of the studies, authored by Jewish People Policy Institute think tank researcher Sara Hirschhorn, focused on the field of Israel Studies and found that it, too, is going through an “identity crisis.” Hirschhorn noted that Israel Studies has increasingly shifted toward self-criticism and even self-excoriation—unlike other ethnic studies programs, which are explicitly designed to instill pride in the groups they study.
She explained:
“[The field of Israel Studies] was not originally neutral on Israel’s right to exist, and of course it isn’t neutral any longer. It has simply reversed course. As all of us likely know, the field itself, along with Jewish Studies, is now not merely politically split, but deeply polarized. In some settings, it is thoroughly anti-Zionist.”
It turns out, as is often the case, we are our own worst enemies. When Jewish Studies courses themselves are promoting anti-Zionist views, is it any wonder that students like the one I mentioned are now participating in anti-Israel protests - right alongside their Palestinian classmates?
When well-educated Jewish professors - regarded as experts
on the subject - promote these ideas, how can their students not be influenced?
Especially if these students come to believe that their pro-Israel parents and
synagogue rabbis ‘lied’ to them? This makes the phenomenon even more insidious.
What has happened is that for many intellectual Jews with no
real Jewish education, their identity has become rooted in progressivism. That
explains much of what is happening today. The identity crisis now facing young
Jews is whether progressive ideology should be seen as superior to Jewish
values. Or worse, whether any Jewish ideology based on the Torah is immoral.
Judaism is being redefined in the image of progressive values, as espoused by
their Jewish Studies professors.
This mindset helps explain why the (now former) Jewish
president of Penn could say that calls for genocide against Jews ‘depend on the
context.’ It explains why so many younger Jews in New York could support an
anti-Israel candidate for mayor. It even helps explain why the National
Education Association (NEA), dominated by progressives, voted to sever ties
with the ADL. Which included support from some Jewish educators.
Those who love to “blame it all on Netanyahu’ are
overstating their case. While it may be true that he has turned some Democrats
against Israel, I would argue that in most such cases, their support was at best
quite shallow. True Democratic supporters of Israel still stand by her and
reject anti-Israel rhetoric. Progressives, however, will only support an Israel
that aligns with their values. And, unfortunately, there are some members of
the Israeli Knesset who share that progressive outlook and vilify any version
of Israel that leans to the right of it.
What makes the trend toward progressive values - and its
ideological offspring, anti-Zionism (increasingly morphing into antisemitism) -
so troubling is that these values are already dominant in many other spheres.
They are promoted on college campuses and reinforced by an entertainment
industry and media ecosystem heavily populated by progressives. These
influences are not to be underestimated. They are extremely powerful and can
easily overwhelm values learned in the home.
This deeply concerns me. And I don’t believe there’s much we
can do about it when it comes to the general public.
But what we can do is teach our children well. Ensure
they receive a strong Jewish education that ‘immunizes’ them against the
ideological winds of our time. And we must do our best to reach out and try to
disabuse young Jews of their uncritical embrace of progressive ideology. Only
then can we begin to restore their pride in being Jewish.
*Update - My apologies for the strange look of this post. There is apparently something wrong with the blogger that is blocking my ability to control the look of the posts. Hopefully this will soon be corrected.
