by Andrew Silow-Carroll
NJJN Editor-in-Chief

October 28, 2009

For a while there I could understand why people disagreed with J Street, but I couldn’t figure out why the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group enraged them so.

I think I’m figuring it out.

As an upstart alternative to the mighty American Israel Public Affairs Committee, J Street aims to be a voice for American Jews who want the United States to take a more assertive role in the Mideast peace process. They resist the idea of unquestioning support of Israel’s sitting government, and feel the settlement movement is fast destroying the possibility of a two-state solution.

It’s easy to see why a good chunk of the American-Jewish community, especially its leadership class, disagrees with these positions. For many veteran pro-Israel activists, American “assertiveness” means unacceptable pressure on Israel. AIPAC’s policy has long been to reflect (sometimes enthusiastically, sometimes not so much) the policies and positions of Israel’s elected government — Israeli voters, after all, have to live with the consequences of their government’s actions. As for the settler movement: Some organizations support the settlers outright; others insist the emphasis on settlements obscures the real issue, which they say is Palestinian intransigence and incitement.

But as J Street followers gathered in Washington this week for their first-ever conference, critics didn’t just disagree with their politics. A few began a campaign to tar the group as anti-Israel at worst, naive and dangerous at best. J Street head Jeremy Ben-Ami had to defend not just his positions, but deny assertions that his goal was to undermine the Jewish state.

What accounts for this sort of anger, especially when it extends beyond the reliably intolerant activists who have never brooked dissent?

I think it’s a generational thing.

I keep going back to something Ben-Ami said in James Traub’s much-talked-about profile of J Street in The New York Times Magazine. Here’s the paragraph:

The average age of the dozen or so [J Street] staff members is about 30. Ben-Ami speaks for, and to, this post-Holocaust generation. “They’re all intermarried,” he says. “They’re all doing Buddhist seders.” They are, he adds, baffled by the notion of “Israel as the place you can always count on when they come to get you.” 

As soon as I read this, I understood that he was speaking broadly about the generation of Jews attracted to J Street, not the J Street staff per se. Nevertheless, many readers ignored that distinction, and started blogging that J Street was staffed by indifferent Jews who didn’t care enough about Judaism to marry within the faith.

Last week, in an interview with Atlantic blogger Jeffrey Goldberg, Ben-Ami insisted the paragraph was misleading, and that he had sought a retraction from the Times. “What I said is that the young generation of Jews is a different generation, and all that,” he told Goldberg. “No one is intermarried in my office!”

And from there the interview entered what Goldberg called “Seinfeldian” territory, as Ben-Ami quickly added, “There’s nothing wrong with intermarriage.” A 1984 graduate of Princeton, Ben-Ami is of the generation that has seen intermarriage morph from taboo to norm. In the past 20 years, mainstream Jewish movements have either embraced interfaith families (Reform) or pledged to be more welcoming (Conservative). Ben-Ami says his friends who are intermarried are “searching for welcoming Jewish communities.” How welcoming they should be is a mainstream Jewish discussion.

And it’s part of a wider discussion about the dissolving boundaries between Jew and gentile, Jewish and Other. Younger, non-Orthodox Jews are fluid in their identities, often proudly Jewish but part of a world in which multiple religious and ethnic identities are the norm.

Not surprisingly, Israel plays a much different role for this generation than it did for their parents and grandparents. In a study called “Beyond Distancing,” Steven M. Cohen and Ari Kleiman showed how age is directly related to Israel attachment over the entire age range, and how younger adult Jews are less attached to Israel than older generations. A major factor in their study: the increasing number of intermarried Jews among the young.

For J Street’s critics, the group’s rise, like that of intermarriage itself, is evidence of weakening Jewish bonds among the young and an eroding sense of Jewish peoplehood. According to these critics, those most likely to push the “peace” platform are weakly identified Jews to begin with who won’t suffer or sweat the failure of their misguided policies.

For J Street’s champions, its followers represent a more multidimensional, less reflexively tribal identity. They are more open to new ideas and influences. Unlike a generation scarred by the Holocaust or weighted down by myths of Israeli infallibility and insecurity, they are able to see the situation with more clarity and less ethnic defensiveness than their elders.

Both sides have a point.

J Street’s membership no doubt includes Jews of all ages; Peace Now itself was founded over 30 years ago. But it owes a lot of its buzz and potential to the way it appeals to Jews who have questioned their elders’ boundaries (literally and figuratively) and assumptions. The debate over J Street is not just over Israel, but over how to be Jewish.

 

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Down on J Street: A response

In his Oct. 29 column (“J Street: It’s a generational thing,”), Andrew Silow-Carroll posits that J Street has widespread appeal to the young generation. He says that “the debate over J Street is not just over Israel but over how to be Jewish.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The debate over J Street is entirely over Israel and over who the group purports to represent.

J Street is not representative of mainstream Jewish opinion, either in the U.S. or in Israel. In key areas it is not even in line with the administration that it so admires. For example:

• J Street advocates that the U.S. negotiate with Hamas without that group’s having to renounce violence, accept Israel’s right to exist, and accept all previous accords — conditions stipulated not just by the U.S. but by all members of the Quartet.

• When Israel was forced through Operation Cast Lead to respond to the thousands of rockets raining down for years on its innocent civilians, J Street drew moral equivalence between Israel’s response and the terrorists who sent those rockets from Gaza.

• Until recently, J Street proposed that no sanctions be placed on Iran even though the threat of sanctions is what has brought Iran to the negotiating table — and sanctions are supported by the vast majority of Jews and members of Congress; more recently, J Street has moderated its untenable position on sanctions but suggests, counter to the passage of sanctions legislation in the House, that any move toward sanctions is premature.

• J Street opposes House Res. 867 as it currently stands. This resolution, now gaining signatures in Congress, voices strong support for the administration’s rejection of the Goldstone report’s findings and applauds its efforts to end Israel’s isolation at the UN and other international forums. How could any organization that is “pro-Israel” possibly reject a resolution showing strong bipartisan support for Israel at a time when the delegitimization campaign against Israel is at an all-time high?

The answer can be understood by a more careful look at J Street. Most notably, major elements in this organization acknowledge, on their own, their ambivalence about supporting Israel. At the J Street conference, their college program, J Street U, voted to allow each college chapter to decide whether or not to include the words “pro-Israel” in its title. One J Street U board member clarified that they don’t want to alienate Jews on campus who are not comfortable saying they’re pro-Israel. And, at the conference, Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s executive director, refused to call J Street a Zionist organization.

Who is J Street speaking for? Certainly not for most Jews, who do support Israel. The attendees at the conference applauded loudly each time Israel was bashed, yet there was virtual silence regarding Israel’s liberal values and its democratic system. Time and again Israel was morally equated with its totalitarian neighbors. J Street has its own agenda that is completely out of touch with the mainstream community.

The bottom-line difference between J Street and other pro-Israel or Jewish organizations is not about Jewish identity, but exactly about the question of support for Israel. Other Jewish organizations are willing to publicly acknowledge and state their support for Israel. That doesn’t mean they think Israel is perfect or that they support every action Israel takes. But there is a genuine positive feeling for Israel. Not so with J Street. Bafflingly and tragically, the organization rejects so many policies that the vast majority of mainstream Jews hold dear.

The truth is, there is no need for J Street. There already exists in Washington an incredibly successful bipartisan pro-Israel lobby that favors a two-state solution, knows the settlement issue needs to be resolved by the two parties directly, and welcomes a wide array of opinions under its big tent. J Street seems hamstrung by its initial creation as a self-described counter to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which truly does represent the Jewish mainstream. In trying so hard not be AIPAC, J Street has become an organization where anti-Israel voices feel comfortable and Zionism is no longer openly embraced.

We hope the next generation of Jews will live in a world where Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, where Israel’s self-defense measures are not equated with the acts of terror groups, and where Israel is free to make life-and-death security decisions without arrogant dictates and “well-meaning” pressure. Thank God we can count on AIPAC to continue ensuring this future remains a possibility.

Marty Gross

Roger Jacobs

Eric Kanter

Steve Klinghoffer

David Steiner

Sylvia Steiner

Roy Tanzman

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