美國猶太人是否放棄以色列？

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/28/are-american-jews-giving-up-on-israel/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=%2AEditors%20Picks

外交政策期刊 (Foreign Policy)          July 28, 2017

Are American Jews Giving Up on Israel?

美國猶太人是否放棄以色列？             作者：Debra Kamin

2017年7月28日

《谷歌翻譯 》

TEL AVIV，以色列 - 1964年以色列電影“Sallah Shabati”中的場景，為美國猶太人和以色列之間的關係提供了完美的結晶。

它在以色列中部的一個猶太國家基金會森林裡播出，新以色列的移民和名字薩拉在種植樹木。一輛出租車拉著富裕的美國夫婦誰支付了森林。在這對雙扣之間拍了幾張照片和開車，一對新的夫婦拉起來，帶有第一個捐助者名字的標誌迅速換出了新的一個。附近的以色列人從他們的眉毛上擦拭汗水，微笑第二對夫婦的相機，並在他們之間笑笑。

這個諷刺本月感到特別激烈，因為以色列和美國猶太人之間的前​​所未有的破裂威脅會爆發成為永久的分裂。一些僑民猶太人因以色列超正統宗教組織的一系列立法衝擊而憤怒，現在正在威脅要一勞永逸地縫合他們的深刻口袋。

現代的東正教猶太教組織Seth Farber說：“這個裂痕是真實的，他是領導ITIM的組織，該組織向以色列人提供援助，以便對國家的宗教官僚機構進行導航。 “（不是超正教的猶太人）不僅不舒服，他們說：這不是我們所知道的以色列。

這些問題都圍繞著一個猶太人是誰，以色列人可以與以色列人生活有關的東西，這些棘手的問題一直在醞釀著多年。但是上個月，以色列政府在非正統猶太人遵守猶太人猶太教猶太人猶太教猶太教猶太人猶太教猶太人的猶太教儀式上，對西方的平等主義禱告進行了迅速的雙打，並且批准了一項阻止除了最宗教的猶太人以外進行猶太人轉變的法案，過度。

儘管以色列作為議會民主的地位，以色列在重大生活問題上提供了一項超正教拉比合法權威聯盟，包括婚姻，離婚和埋葬。以色列只有約11％的猶太人將自己定義為哈里迪或超宗教，但出生率明顯高於世界以色列人，每名婦女6.9名兒童相比之下為3.1名，這意味著他們的數字預計在未來十年將大幅增加。

該部門在全國多黨制方面也發揮了巨大的作用，本傑明·內塔尼亞胡總理目前擁有一個剃刀式的61座聯盟;一個黨的異議可能會拋棄多數，強迫新的選舉，給總理帶來挑戰。

內塔尼亞胡知道，為了堅持權力，他需要超正統派Shas和猶太猶太教猶太教的合作

內塔尼亞胡知道，為了堅持權力，他需要超正統黨Shas和猶太教猶太教猶太教的合作，這個現實比西方牆更加戲劇化。

世界上最重要的猶太人禱告之一，西牆由以色列首席拉比丁（Sir Rabbinate）控制，這意味著這個規則與超正教會堂內的規則是一樣的。男性和女性崇拜者被隔離，婦女方面完全禁止傳統的“男性”禱告，例如摩西五經，特立福利亞（phylacteries）和基皮蓬（骷髏頭）。

在以色列，即使是最世俗的猶太人也習慣於猶太教堂和宗教紀念碑的禱告通常需要適度的穿著和性別隔離的調整。但在美國，猶太人遵守的情況要復雜得多。超過一半的美國猶太人認識到改革或保守的猶太人運動，婦女歡迎穿戴禱告披肩，從摩西五經讀經，丈夫和妻子一起唱希伯來文獻，猶太法律在古代猶太人飲食法律）和保持安息日有一個更寬鬆，現代的解釋。儘管以色列的大多數猶太人認為是宗教或世俗的，但在以色列邊界之外，完全有可能實踐一種長期猶太教的觀念，對普通的超正統觀察者而言，這種猶太教根本就不像猶太教一樣。

那麼當內塔尼亞胡在上個月晚些時候向超正教壓力鞠躬and and，而且在西牆建立一個平均主義的空間，而不是僅僅是為了混合性別的崇拜，而是讓女人唱歌禱告摩西五經和現場的女孩參與蝙蝠mitzvah的儀式 - 這一舉動被視為對全球大多數猶太人的一幕。

以色列宗教活動的執行主任阿納特·霍夫曼（Anat Hoffman）說：“以色列和以色列的所有猶太人都是以色列的訪問量最大的地方，以色列政府已經把鑰匙交給了一個極端少數群體。行動中心和“婦女之牆”聯合創始人，該組織一直站在現場鬥爭的前列。 “我認為，出於政治原因，政府本著生存，願意出售我們國家珍貴的一些最珍貴的價值觀。”

在同一天，以色列政府也推行了一項有爭議的轉換法案，宣布以色列首相拉比寧是決定誰是猶太人的唯一權力。

來自散居猶太人組織的回應迅速而且兇猛。猶太人機構是世界上最大的猶太非營利組織，並且是向以色列移民的重要支持者，立即取消了與內塔尼亞胡的計劃晚餐，抗議並發表了一個譴責，稱“譴責[d]”決定。它呼籲以色列政府立即“了解其步驟的嚴重性”並扭轉局面。

同時，包括佛羅里達房地產巨頭艾薩克·費舍爾在內的重要猶太捐助者，美國以色列公共事務委員會保守派的董事會成員公開宣布，他們正凍結對以色列的財政捐助，直到政府撤回決定為止。

“人們正在把頭髮拉出來。他們說：“我不是寫支票，”ITIM的Farber說。

“這是猶太復國主義的一個嚴重問題。猶太復國主義意在與猶太人有關，而不僅僅是猶太國家。

“這是猶太復國主義的一個嚴重問題。猶太復國主義意在與猶太人有關，而不僅僅是猶太國家。

美國和加拿大代表約150萬猶太人的改革猶太教聯盟主席拉比·雅各布斯（Rabbi Rick Jacobs）說，“裂痕”這個詞是一個低調的說法。他說：“有一點構造轉變。” “六月二十五日發生的事情發生了一個前所未有的事情，...它不再像往常一樣生活，它是猶太人生活的一些核心承諾的核心。”

美國是以色列最古老，最有聲望的盟友，但許多美國猶太人因為頑固的佔領感到沮喪，面對全國各地大學校園的反猶太復國主義情緒的膨脹，發現它比以往任何時候都更複雜，宣布支持猶太人的家園而在美國，猶太復國主義與宗教實踐相輔相成：皮尤研究中心2013年的一項研究描述了一個美國猶太社區越來越多地偏離宗教儀式，在以色列的年輕和不太宗教觀察的地區中，以色列的支持力度較弱人口。

那麼為什麼呢，以色列政府呢是否允許邊緣的一批拉比人通過立法來增加火力？法伯指出了幾個因素。第一個是以色列首席猶太人與猶太世界其他地方之間的弱化對話。他確定的第二個更關鍵的因素是在蘇聯解體後的幾年中，將近有一百萬俄語猶太人吸收了以色列。

法利伯說：“那個阿利亞，”使用希伯來文字來移民到以色列，“讓他們以前所未曾遭受過的猶太世界的難以置信的多樣性暴露出來。突然間他們面對成千上萬的人，他們認為他們是猶太人，但是在拉比丁的心裡，他們不是猶太人。它所做的是對所有散居社區造成巨大的懷疑。“

以色列的回歸法規定，所有猶太人都有資格在以色列立即公民身份，將“猶太人”定義為擁有一個猶太祖父母。但是，猶太人的塔木德法則，或者是哈拉哈哈，將猶太人定義為一個猶太母親。從1988年到2004年，以色列面臨著大量新興公民，他們不僅沒有猶太母親，而且與猶太人的習俗也沒有任何联系，例如避免豬肉或保持安息日。有些人甚至去慶祝聖誕節。隨著這些移民已經結婚，撫養孩子，帶來了新一代以色列公民，國家的超正統派人士越來越擔心猶太儀式如婚姻和安息日遵守的神聖性正在受到侵害。這種動態，連同以色列聯合政治的數學，把民主國家猶太法的作用問題擺在政治辯論的前列。

以色列民主研究所宗教，國家和國家事務中心副主席Yedidia Stern教授說：“幾代前，超東正教徒基本上都對保護自己的生活方式感興趣。 “現在我們看到[哈里迪猶太人]很大程度上參與塑造公共領域，這是一個新的現象。”

以色列的西岸定居點也起到了關鍵作用，為Haredi控制猶太人身份問題鋪平了道路。國家宗教社區 - 以以色列猶太人為代表的東正教而不是超正統派的針織獼猴桃，他們自豪地服務於以色列國防軍，猶太人在西岸和加沙定居的權利是一個既定的既成為在宗教和國家問題上作仲裁者的成就。但是，隨著超東正教獲得權力，他們與現在代表國家宗教的猶太家庭黨達成協議，有效地控制了轉換和宗教實踐問題，以換取更大的擴張力。

稱為單發票投票，還是猶太版豬肉桶政治：

以色列的超正統立法者說服其更溫和的宗教代表對本國原教旨主義緩慢的蠕動漠不關心

以色列的超正統立法者說服其更溫和的宗教代表對本國原教旨主義的緩慢蠕動漠不關心，以換取西岸增加的建設的餘地。雅各布說，他們在保護自己的利益的時候說，他們閒逛世界猶太人。正是改革猶太教相信是一個壞的賭注。

Jacobs說：“我不相信這個現任內閣的許多成員對世界猶太人的實力有著深刻的了解。 “我們都在一起，但這些決定表明，我們不像我們所有人都想到的一樣，造成真正的傷害。這是一個深刻的錯誤估算。

許多以色列人說，內塔尼亞胡是否會感到這種錯誤估計的影響，取決於老派基層政治。總理在岩石和艱苦的地方之間有著豐富的經驗，在超東正教的支持下，他的政治上更加安全。霍夫曼說，美國猶太人需要做的不僅僅是生氣或冷漠。他們需要遊說以色列選民，將這個裂痕的後果帶給下一次以色列的選舉。

“以色列是全球所有猶太人的聯合項目。以色列反映我們每一個人，並影響我們每一個人。最大的敵人是冷漠，或說以色列無所謂，“她說。 “以色列太重要了，不能僅是留給以色列人。”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/28/are-american-jews-giving-up-on-israel/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=%2AEditors%20Picks

Are American Jews Giving Up on Israel?

By Debra Kamin

July 28, 2017

TEL AVIV, Israel — A scene in the 1964 Israeli film Sallah Shabati offers a pitch-perfect crystallization of the relationship between American Jews and Israel.

It plays out in a Jewish National Fund forest in central Israel, where new Israeli immigrant and titular character Sallah is planting trees. A taxi pulls up bearing the rich American couple who paid for the forest. After the pair snaps a few photos and drives away, a new couple pulls up, and the sign bearing the first donors’ names is quickly swapped out for a new one. The Israelis nearby wipe the sweat off their brows, smile for the second couple’s camera, and chuckle among themselves.

The satire feels particularly poignant this month, as an unprecedented rift between Israel and American Jewry threatens to erupt into a permanent schism. Some diaspora Jews, furious with a series of legislative blows from Israel’s ultra-Orthodox religious establishment, are now threatening to stitch up their deep pockets once and for all.

“The rift is real,” says Seth Farber, a modern Orthodox rabbi who leads ITIM, an organization that offers assistance to Israelis in navigating the country’s religious bureaucracy. “[Jews who are not ultra-Orthodox] are not just shifting uncomfortably. They are saying: This is not the Israel that we know.”

The issues, all revolving around the ever-thorny questions of who is a Jew and what claim non-Israelis can stake to matters of Israeli life, have been simmering for years. But last month, when the Israeli government issued a swift one-two punch to non-Orthodox Jewish observance by nixing egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall and approving a bill that would block all but the most religious rabbis from performing Jewish conversions, the pot boiled over.

Despite its status as a parliamentary democracy, Israel grants a coalition of ultra-Orthodox rabbis legal authority over major life issues, including marriage, divorce, and burial. Only about 11 percent of Jews in Israel define themselves as Haredi, or ultra-religious, but their significantly higher birth rate — 6.9 children per woman, compared with 3.1 among secular Israelis — means their numbers are projected to dramatically increase over the next 10 years.

The sector also wields immense power in the nation’s multiparty system, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu currently holds a razor-thin 61-seat coalition; dissent from a single party could throw the majority, forcing new elections and bringing a challenge to the premiership.

Netanyahu knows that in order to hold on to power, he needs the cooperation of ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism

Netanyahu knows that in order to hold on to power, he needs the cooperation of ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, and nowhere has this reality played out more dramatically than at the Western Wall.

One of the most important sites for Jewish prayer in the world, the Western Wall is under the control of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, which means that the rules there are the same as within an ultra-Orthodox synagogue. Male and female worshippers are segregated, and there is a total ban, on the women’s side, on traditionally “male” accoutrements of prayer such as Torah scrolls, tefillin (phylacteries), and kippot (skullcaps).

In Israel, even the most secular Jews are used to the idea that prayer at synagogues and religious monuments usually requires adjustments like modest dress and gender segregation. But in the United States, the picture of Jewish observance is much more complex. More than half of American Jews identify with either the Reform or Conservative Jewish movement, where women are welcomed to don prayer shawls and read from the Torah, husbands and wives sing Hebrew liturgies together, and ancient Jewish laws over issues such as kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) and keeping the Sabbath have a looser, modern interpretation. Whereas most Jews in Israel identify as either religious or secular, outside of Israel’s borders it’s entirely possible to practice a form of secular Judaism that looks, to the average ultra-Orthodox observer, not like Judaism at all.

So when Netanyahu bowed to ultra-Orthodox pressure late last month and nixed a hard-won agreement to build an egalitarian space at the Western Wall — one that would have allowed not just for mixed-gender worship but for women to sing prayers and read from the Torah and for girls at the site to engage in the ritual of the bat mitzvah — the move was seen as a slap in the face to the majority of the globe’s Jews.

“The Wall is the most visited place in Israel for all Jews, from both Israel and abroad, and the government of Israel has taken the keys and given it to one extremist minority group,” says Anat Hoffman, the executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center and co-founder of Women of the Wall, an organization that has been at the forefront of the struggle at the site. “I think the government, for political reasons of just survival, is willing to sell downriver some of the most precious values that our country holds dear.”

On the very same day, the Israeli government also pushed through a controversial conversion bill that would declare the Israeli Chief Rabbinate the sole power for determining who is indeed a Jew.

The response from diaspora Jewish organizations was swift and scathing. The Jewish Agency, the world’s largest Jewish nonprofit and a key supporter of immigration to Israel, immediately canceled a planned dinner with Netanyahu in protest and issued a rebuke, saying it “deplore[d]” the decision. It called upon the Israeli government to immediately “understand the gravity of its steps” and reverse course.

Meanwhile, key Jewish donors, including Florida real estate tycoon Isaac Fisher, a board member of the conservative American Israel Public Affairs Committee, publicly announced that they were freezing financial contributions to Israel until the government backtracked on the decisions.

“People are pulling their hair out. They say, ‘I’m not writing checks,’” says ITIM’s Farber.

“This is a serious issue for Zionism. Zionism is meant to relate to the Jewish people, not just the Jewish state.”

“This is a serious issue for Zionism. Zionism is meant to relate to the Jewish people, not just the Jewish state.”

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, which represents some 1.5 million Jews in the United States and Canada, says the term “rift” is an understatement. “There has been a bit of a tectonic shift,” he says. “What happened on June 25 signaled something unprecedented.… It’s no longer business as usual, and it strikes at the very heart of some core commitments of Jewish life.”

The United States is Israel’s oldest and most vocal ally, but many American Jews, frustrated by an intractable occupation and facing a swell in anti-Zionist sentiment on college campuses across the country, are finding it more complicated than ever to declare their support for the Jewish homeland. And in America, Zionism and religious practice operate hand in hand: A 2013 study by the Pew Research Center described an American Jewish community that is increasingly drifting away from religious observance and where support for Israel is weaker among the younger and less religiously observant segments of the population.

So why, then, would the Israeli government allow a fringe group of rabbis to push through legislation that adds fuel to the fire? Farber points to a few factors. The first is a weakening dialogue between the chief rabbis of Israel and the rest of the Jewish world. The second, more critical factor he identifies was the absorption of nearly 1 million Russian-speaking Jews to Israel in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“That aliyah,” Farber says, using the Hebrew word for immigration to Israel, “exposed the Rabbinate to the incredible diversity of the Jewish world in a way they had never been exposed before. All of a sudden they were faced with hundreds of thousands of people who thought they were Jewish, but in the Rabbinate’s mind, they weren’t Jewish. And what it did was create an enormous suspicion of all diaspora communities.”

Israel’s Law of Return states that all Jews are eligible for immediate citizenship in Israel and defines “Jewishness” as having one Jewish grandparent. But Jewish Talmudic law, or Halakha, defines Jewishness as having a Jewish mother. From 1988 to 2004, Israel was faced with a flood of new citizens who not only did not have Jewish mothers, but they also had little or no connection to Jewish customs such as avoiding pork or keeping the Sabbath; some even went as far as celebrating Christmas. As those immigrants have married, raised children, and brought forth an entire new generation of Israeli citizens, the nation’s ultra-Orthodox have been increasingly alarmed that the sanctity of Jewish rituals such as marriage and Sabbath observance is being violated. This dynamic, along with the mathematics of Israeli coalition politics, has brought the issue of the role of Jewish law within the democratic state to the forefront of the political debate.

“A few generations ago, the ultra-Orthodox were basically interested in protecting their own lifestyles,” says professor Yedidia Stern, the vice president of the Center for Religion, Nation and State at the Israel Democracy Institute. “Now we see [Haredi Jews] are much involved in shaping the public sphere, and this is a new phenomenon.”

Israel’s West Bank settlements also played a critical role in paving the way for Haredi control over issues of Jewish identity. The National Religious community — the knitted kippa-wearing Israeli Jews who define themselves as Orthodox but not ultra-Orthodox, who proudly serve in the Israel Defense Forces, and for whom the right of Jews to settle in the West Bank and Gaza is a fait accompli — used to serve as the arbiter on questions of religion and state. But as the ultra-Orthodox gained power, they hatched a deal with the Jewish Home party, which now represents the National Religious, effectively ceding control of conversion and religious practice issues in exchange for greater leverage on settlement expansion.

Call it single-issue voting, or the kosher version of pork-barrel politics:

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox legislators have convinced its more moderate religious representatives to turn a blind eye to the nation’s slow creep of fundamentalism

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox legislators have convinced its more moderate religious representatives to turn a blind eye to the nation’s slow creep of fundamentalism in exchange for leeway over increased West Bank construction. But while they were protecting their own interests, Jacobs says, they gambled on world Jewry sitting idly by. It was, the Reform rabbi believes, a bad bet.

“I don’t believe many members of this current cabinet have a deep understanding of the strength of world Jewry,” Jacobs says. “We’re all in this together, but these decisions signaled that we’re not as together as all of us may have thought, and that causes real harm. It was a profound miscalculation.”

Whether Netanyahu will feel the repercussions of that miscalculation, many Israelis say, depends on old-school grassroots politics. The prime minister has plenty of experience maneuvering between rocks and hard places, and he feels more secure politically with the support of the ultra-Orthodox. American Jews, Hoffman says, need to do more than get angry or apathetic. They need to lobby Israeli voters to bring the repercussions of this rift to the next Israeli election.

“Israel is a joint project of all Jews around the planet. Israel reflects on every one of us and affects every one of us. The biggest enemy is to be apathetic or to say Israel doesn’t matter,” she says. “Israel is too important to be left to just Israelis.”