When I was twenty-four, I decided to return to Israel for good. For a while, things seemed to be going fine: I was making the rounds among scores of relatives and going on lots of dates with guys who picked me up at bus stops, at the grocery store, at the post office. I’d never been this popular in the U.S.

After a while, though, I’d visited every relative there was to visit and had dinner with all the single guys in my neighborhood. So I did what any self-respecting American in my position would do: I started watching TV. Lots of it.

Because I’m a recovering TV addict, I didn’t have cable, which meant I could only get two channels. On a good day, I watched back-to-back episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger and Baywatch, although occasionally I also caught pilots of shows that never made it in the U.S., like the one where a hippie, an accountant, a soccer mom, and a token African-American end up being the sole survivors of a nuclear war; wacky hijinx ensue.

My hands-down favorite, though, was Judge Judy. I liked the way Judge Judy always got worked up and ended up yelling at the litigants. “You’re a piece of garbage!” she’d shout. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

I come from a family where nobody shouts—we prefer guilt trips and silent treatments because, you know, we’re civilized. The transition to living in Israel, then, where people were forever yelling at each other, was a difficult one for me, and Judge Judy functioned as a kind of life coach. “What would Judge Judy do?” I’d ask myself during conflicts large and small. In the evening, I’d practice in front of the mirror: “Do you think I’m an idiot? Are you crazy??” During the day, I’d try out my new skills on cabbies: “Either turn on the meter or let me out!”

“No can do, motek,” the cabbies would say. “The meter’s broken. Honest.” And then they’d charge me ten dollars for going two blocks.

After a while, increasingly desperate, I went to see a cross-cultural counselor who’d successfully made aliyah from Canada twenty years earlier. And I swear to God that I’m telling the truth when I write that she looked exactly like Judge Judy.

I sat in her office, surrounded by shelves of miniature plastic figurines. “What do I do?” I cried. “Teach me how to be a real Israeli!”

“First of all,” she said, “you might consider wearing more makeup.” Then she said, “That’ll be seventy shekels.”

Back to Judge Judy it was.

A while later, I received a call from the cable company. “Do you want cable?” a man asked.

“I can’t,” I told him. “I’m already watching too much TV.”

Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang. “Cable company!” the man announced from the other side of the door. “Come on,” he said once I’d opened up. “You know you want it. I could tell on the phone, which is why I rushed over.”

Come on, Judge Judy, I prayed. Help me be strong. “No thanks,” I said.

“There are twenty-six apartments in this building,” he told me. “You’re the only one without cable. You can’t be serious.”

We stared each other down, and then finally, two hours later, he turned around and left, defeated. Okay, maybe it wasn’t two hours, but it was a long time. Really.

He hadn't asked for my phone number, so it was only a moral victory, but it was a victory nonetheless. Now if only I could figure out how to use eyeliner...

Election day this year happens to be the 13th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. It’s also the 13th anniversary of Michigan’s 28-25 loss to Michigan State in football.

I was a recent grad-school dropout (I’d go on to drop out once more for good measure), and I was living in a small apartment just around the block from my parents’ house, because why cut the cord before you have to? Plus, they let me come home to do laundry. And eat their food. For free.

My father and I were in the basement TV room, watching the game, when the announcement came that Rabin had been shot. For his birthday, my father had gotten a big-screen TV, and here was the perfect occasion to try out the fancy picture-in-picture feature. On the big screen: Michigan and Michigan State battling it out; on the small screen: a press conference live from Tel Aviv.

My Israeli mother was home too, doing something in the kitchen, and my father waited until the end of the quarter to go tell her what was up. She cried and I watched her, unsure what to feel. Clearly something big was happening.

The next afternoon, Sunday, I found myself at a memorial on U of M’s campus. One speaker told us that he never answers the phone on Shabbat, and so he and his extended family had devised a sequence of rings to notify him if there was an emergency. “So you can imagine my panic and fear,” he said, “when the phone started ringing.” It turned out to be a distant aunt for whom the news couldn’t wait until sundown. At first, the speaker had been angry for having his Shabbat spoiled, but then he had some kind of epiphany about how we were all one extended family, blah blah blah.

Except it wasn’t all blah blah blah, because the following morning I woke up early to go watch a live broadcast of the funeral with my mother. The last time I’d seen her weep like that was when Rabin and Arafat shook hands two years earlier, only then it had been with joy.

That night, I lay awake in bed listening to the steam pipes in my building clunking. My family had left Israel when I was ten because my father, a Canadian, was unhappy. At the time, there was a stigma associated with leaving. If moving to Israel is making aliyah or ascent, then leaving it was yerida or descent, a kind of betrayal.

And here I was, twenty-four, working as a programmer at a local software company and feeling so lonely that to pass the time, I daydreamed about the guy who arranged the produce at my local grocery store. Surely there was more that I could be doing with my life.

And just like that, I knew: I had to return to Israel. If you weren’t doing anything special with your life anyway, I realized, there was really no excuse for staying in the States. The plan was ingenious in its simplicity: I’d move to Israel, get a job, and find a nice Israeli boy to marry.

There were also other parts to this fantasy. In Israel, we had lots of relatives, and in Michigan, we had none. If I moved to Israel, Jewish holidays would never be lonely, and—more importantly—I’d never have to listen to Christmas carols again. Plus, I was tired of making friends only to have them move away to a different time zone, never to be heard from again. Israel was small, and any friends I’d make would have nowhere to hide. And my parents, when they retired, would return to Israel as well, and grow old happily in the family hub instead of bitter and alone in some Florida nursing home.

Really, it was the perfect plan, and a few months later I was on my way, certain that I was never coming back. Except, of course, that I was wrong,

In retrospect, the signs of imminent failure were there from the very beginning: On the flight to Tel-Aviv, I sat next to a teary woman about my age whose visa to the U.S. had expired. “I hate Israel,” she sobbed. “I miss my boyfriend.” I did my best to ignore her, choosing to focus instead on the man who in front of us who was humming joyfully to himself. Later, he stood ahead of me in the line for passport control. “I’m making aliyah!” he told the woman who was checking his papers. She rolled her eyes, and when it was my turn, she told me, “I give him three months.”

I should have asked her how long she gave me, but I didn’t. “Pessimist,” I thought. “I’ll show her.” And then I walked out into the bright sunlight, mistakenly believing I was finally home.

Dateline: POTSDAM, August, 2005--I am in Germany as part of a collaborative three-nation research study of the Russian-Jewish diaspora. The entire seven-person research team is meeting in Potsdam to go over our findings, discuss implications, and, yes, iron out the various disagreements that are an inherent part of collaborative work.

I am standing in front of a large building with many doors, one of which leads to the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, which had written the grant for this project. All the doors have signs, but my few words of German (guten tag) are grossly insufficient to determine which bell to ring, so I stand in front of the building trying to decide which door looks most Jewish. Fortunately, despite the light drizzle, I spot several pedestrians walking along the street. I walk toward them, intending to ask for directions, but as I draw near, I notice that their faces are wrinkled with age. It occurs to me that they were probably alive during the Shoah, and I find myself wondering what they had done those many years ago, how they felt about Jews back then, how they feel about Jews on this day. I am Jewish. This information seems important. I don’t want to talk to these men; I don’t want to ask them for directions to a “Jewish Center.”

I am somewhat uneasy about my feelings. My politics are liberal. I teach and write about stereotypes, prejudice and racism. I recognize my thoughts and feelings for what they are – prejudicial and irrational. The men on the street, old as they are, were probably in their preteens when the war ended. It is unlikely that any of them personally did anything worth holding against them, certainly not sixty years later. But what of their parents? Their uncles and aunts? They were old enough. What, I wonder, was their involvement? I have no way of knowing, of course. They could have been righteous gentiles. For that matter, they could have even been German Jews (a few remained after the war). I know avoiding the men would be irrational – well, mostly irrational. Truth is, many Germans didn’t much like Jews in those times. From what I hear, many still don’t. I let the men pass and wait in the rain for someone else to come by.

My wait in the rain was a fitting introduction to Germany, since the purpose of our study – at least in part – was to understand why Russian Jews were migrating to Germany in large numbers and how they experienced their host country and host people once they arrived. A comprehensive treatment of this question would fill a book – ours, and even then we do not pretend to have captured the entirety of this particular immigration experience.

In many ways, Germany’s decision to open its doors to Russian-speaking Jews is even more surprising than the Jewish immigrants’ decision to settle there. To begin with, it is no secret that Germany, like much of Europe, had a long history of anti-Semitism that predated Hitler by many hundreds of years. Then came the Shoah, which reduced an estimated Jewish population of 750,000 in 1933 to about 10,000 at the conclusion of the war. The few who returned from the camps or from hiding were hardly welcomed. Their homes vandalized or occupied, they were a reminder of both Germany’s defeat and its shameful behavior. Even if the passing decades have lessened the anti-Semitism and increased the remorse, Germany’s long-standing antipathy toward immigration of any sort (just months before the legislation passed, Horst Waffenschmidt, the Parliament’s State Secretary to the Interior Ministry remarked that “the Federal Republic of Germany is not a country of immigration) made an immigration policy that specifically targeted Jews, and only Jews, preposterous to even consider.

Interestingly, the initiative originated in East Germany and, for its proponents, became the nation’s moral imperative. In April 12, 1990, newly elected East German parliament (Volkskammer) issued a revolutionary declaration on the responsibility of Germans for Nazi crimes:

“The first freely elected parliament of the GDR acknowledges, in the name of the citizens of this country, that it shares responsibility for the humiliation, persecution, and murder of Jewish women, men, and children. We feel grief and shame in accepting responsibility for this historical burden on Germany. We ask the world Jewry for forgiveness. We ask the people of Israel for forgiveness for the hypocrisy and animosity of official GDR policy toward the State of Israel and for the persecution and degradation of Jewish citizens in our country, which continued after 1945. We declare we will do everything possible to contribute to healing the physical and emotional suffering of survivors, and to speak out for just compensation of material losses.” (Jarusch and Grasnow, 1994:138-139, cited in Harris, 2001)

Within short order, the decision was made (reportedly behind closed doors, with considerable opposition, and not necessarily with the support of the majority) to rebuild the German Jewry. Knowing that more than 1.5 million Jews might be enticed to leave the Soviet Union following USSR’s collapse and subsequent lifting of the emigration ban, Germany decided to specifically target Russian-speaking Jews. (I refer to this group as Russian Jews for convenience, but it should be noted that this immigrant group originated from not only Russia but Ukraine, Latvia, and all of the other former members of the Soviet Union.) The resulting Contingency Refugee Act of 1991, which came on the heels of the unification of East and West Germany, not only allowed almost unlimited immigration for Russian Jews, but gave them an express lane to German citizenship.

Dateline: JERUSALEM, June, 1997 – I am visiting Israel as part of a predissertation grant to study Russian Jewish immigration. In between the work meetings, I am doing some sightseeing, mostly with some relatives in Tel Aviv, but on this day, feeling the need for some space, I insist on taking a tour of Jerusalem on my own. Well, sort of. Although English is my best language, I decide to save money by taking a Russian-language tour of the city.

The tour is supposed to take me by bus to Jerusalem and stop at four or five main attractions before heading back to Tel Aviv. The first stop is Yad Vashem. The bus driver gives us an hour. At the end of the hour, I don’t even consider rejoining the tour. The exhibits are so extensive and so powerful, I want to do nothing but spend the rest of the day there. They are so personal, I am glad to be alone. But of course, I am not truly alone, and at one point I find myself within earshot of an English-language tour. The guide is talking, and, for a moment, I stop to listen.

“Living in America,” he tells the group of U.S. students, “you don’t think that this sort of thing could ever happen there…that’s what the German Jews thought in the 1930s…they thought they were Germans…they thought they were safe…but a Jew is only really safe in Israel, because only Israel has a Jewish majority.” I wonder if the tour guide is right. I don’t want him to be. I make a compelling argument (to myself) to that effect, and I’m convinced he’s not. Completely convinced… but when I find myself in Germany eight years later, I remember his words. Of all the places to go, I think, why here? Why this place? Given the history, can a Jew really feel a connection to Germany? Can a Jew ever again really feel German?

Despite the opposition and Germany’s lack of experience with immigration, the Contingency Refugee Act of 1991 was remarkably well conceived. Indeed, it seemed to have all the necessary ingredients for success: it provided a variety of social benefits, including subsidized housing, access to medical care, and, for the elderly, eligibility for a German pension. It even spread the costs equitably among the German states, mandating that each state accept a number of immigrants in proportion to its population. Moreover, since the purpose was to rebuild the Jewish communities, the legislation gave the funds, along with the responsibility of tracking the immigrants and allocating the necessary resources, directly to the Jewish religious communities.

In the context of the former Soviet Union’s economic uncertainty and its own history of anti-Semitism, the German legislation turned out to be an attractive proposition for Russian Jews: more than 200,000 have immigrated to Germany since the Refugee Act’s inception. Considering that this group now comprises about 90 percent of Germany’s total Jewish population, it would seem that the legislation is an unmeasured success and that this immigrant group now constitutes, for all practical purposes, the new German Jewry. Our research interviews and survey data, however, suggest otherwise. In many ways, they present an immigrant group alienated from its new homeland.

The reasons for the alienation are not altogether obvious, as Russian Jews had some real incentives to come to Germany. In addition to the promise of considerable social benefits, Germany’s European culture, political stability, geographic proximity to the former Soviet Union, and advanced (and socialized) health services were all attractive to Russian Jews. Perhaps the alienation is the result of the harsh economic reality that greeted the new immigrants. At the time of our data collection (in 2004), unemployment was high, even among the college educated, and almost 85 percent of the immigrant sample reported that their gross household income was “much lower” or “lower” than the nation’s average. Moreover, over 60 percent reported that their standard of living was “much lower” or “lower” than it was prior to migration. Or perhaps, the alienation can be best attributed to the fact that after 1991, Russian Jews might have felt they simply had no other place to go. While the vast majority of Russian-Jews migrated to either Israel or the United States in previous decades, those destinations became less viable after 1991. The United States had granted Russian Jews refugee status to facilitate the immigration process as part of the Cold War maneuvering, but that status was lifted almost immediately after the USSR collapsed in 1989. Israel continued to be a popular destination for many Russian Jews, but by 1991, the First Intifada was in full swing, and the violence was a disincentive for many potential migrants.

Whatever the reason, once Russian Jews arrived in Germany they have felt little connection to either the host country or its people. According to our data, without exception, they value their Jewish and Russian identities over being German. More telling, 60 percent feel “not at all” and another 30 percent only “a little” part of the German people, and even that, for most respondents, meant nothing more than the place they were currently living.

Other ways of measuring identity all point to similar alienation. For example, about 70 percent of Russian Jews in Germany reported that they were either “not at all” or only “a little” offended when people blamed or insulted Germans. Moreover, most Russian Jews in Germany were committed to maintaining a distance from German people and culture, with just 6 percent indicating a desire to assimilate. By way of comparison, only about 5 percent of Russian Jews in Israel and the United States felt “not at all” a part of the people in their host country, and most (70 percent of Israelis and 80 percent of Americans) were offended when members of their host country were insulted.

Group differences this strong are rarely seen in the social sciences. Russian Jews in Israel and the United States have not always felt welcomed or valued. They have not always felt like they fit in, and they have not always wanted to fit in, preferring their own ways some of the time. At times, many have reported feeling alienated and discouraged. However, in Germany, alienation from the host society seems to be the norm – the psychological state of most immigrants, most of the time.

It should be noted that the immigration to Germany is much more recent. It is not unreasonable to think that these attitudes might change over time. They usually do, at least with other immigrant groups in other countries. But the early survey and interview data from Germany are not promising. They suggest that Russian Jewish attitudes toward their host country do not seem to change much over time in Germany, especially when compared to Russian Jewish immigrants in Israel and the United States (see chart). This is not to say that they will never change, but the data do suggest that for Russian Jews in Germany, developing a sense of “Germanness” promises to be a much slower process. Rather than years, it may take a generation, maybe even several.

That said, the Refugee Act of 1991 may yet prove successful. As mentioned, over 200,000 Russian-speaking Jews have migrated to Germany since 1991, enough that Germany has recently revised its immigration policy. Since 2006, immigration of Russian Jews has been restricted to those who are under age forty-five and have a minimum level of German fluency.

It is too soon to see the impact of this new legislation, just as it is too early to judge the effectiveness of the previous one. There are still a myriad of problems to be worked out. Most Russian Jews had little contact with Judaism prior to migration and, as a result, many have been relatively inactive in Jewish life, post-migration. Furthermore, as in Israel, there are practical issues regarding who is Jewish (and therefore who qualifies for social aid) that are difficult and contentious, even within the Jewish communities. This too will take time. But as a result of this migration, there is now once again the possibility of a vibrant Jewish community in Germany.

Considering how close the country was to being Judenrein, this is itself an amazing accomplishment – quite possibly a metaphorical rebirth of German Jewry. It’s just not there yet, not even close.

References

Ben-Rafael, E., Lyubansky, M., Glockner, O., Harris, P., Israel, Y., Jasper, W., & Schoeps, J. (2006). Building a diaspora: Russian Jews in Israel, Germany, and the USA. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.

Harris, Paul A. (2001) An Unexpected, Yet Welcome Development: Jewish Migration to Germany, 1990-2000. In, Uwe Hunger, Karin Meenderman and Bernhard Santel (eds.), Einwanderung in Erklaerten und Unerklaerten Einwanderungslaendern. London + Muenster: Lit Verlag.

Indigenous Venezuelans Say: Shalom, Israel!

In a modern twist on the story of the conversos--Jews in Spain and Portugal during the 14th and 15th centuries, who underwent forced conversions to Catholicism -- an investigation is now underway into the case of 200 Venezuelan citizens who went through with fraudulent conversions to Judaism and were awarded immigration papers by the Jewish Agency Aliyah envoy to South America.

Rumor is that Ilan Architecter, the Director of the Israeli absorption center in Ra'anana, had an immigrant quota to meet--though that claim is fiercely denied by The Jewish Agency. Architecter has confessed that he "knew the Rabbi who converted the Venezuelans was suspect," and said that he "wanted to be acknowledged as an excellent employee and therefore wanted to bring as many immigrants to Israel as possible."

Apparently the majority of these immigrants were indigenous Venezuelans, persuaded into conversion by promises of state Aliyah benefits.

Related: The Conversos Dilemma, Crypto-marrano-converso-Jews

4'11" Fury: Not actually Edwards' grandmother, but how cute are those horses on her hat?THE AXIS OF CABBAGE

I’m a Korean-Irish Jew. My mom was born in North Korea and adopted at eight months by a Reform Jewish family. She was converted, went to Hebrew school, had a Bat Mitzvah and rebelled at 12 against everything, including Judaism. She didn’t raise me Jewish.

My grandmother was the one who was always pushing it. She gave me the history, taught me what Shabbat was. When I was 13, I accidentally started dating a Jewish guy. My grandmother was ready to marry us off the next day. He wanted to be a doctor. I ended up breaking up with him because, you know, I was 13, and she didn’t talk to me for two months. I call her the 4-foot-11 Yiddish Fury.

 

Eternal flame: Edwards as a rookie (the black hat means she's in training)

BANGKOK'S THATAWAY

I originally came to Israel on Birthright—this was in 2004. I was a poor college student looking for something to do for winter break. Late one night I went onto Google and typed “free travel.” Birthright came up, so I applied. My grandmother was delighted to pay the deposit and next thing I knew I was on a plane to Israel. I was looking at Thailand originally. I’d never heard of Birthright.

I started dating one of the soldiers while I was there. (Birthright may be responsible for helping half of the IDF get laid.) It was really nice because I extended the trip and got to stay with his family. He was killed in the Netanya mall bombing in 2005. Just a few days ago, the IDF arrested the driver who took the suicide bomber to the mall. It’s still painful to read this stuff, but it doesn’t make me love Israel any less.

I’m not at all worried about war or terrorism. I feel safer here than I do alone on the streets in New York City. Even when the rockets landed in Kiryat Shmona two months ago, you don’t realize it. People wrote me frantic emails, and I wrote back: “I just got back from the bar, what are you talking about?” Israelis don’t live in fear at all.

One of the guys: Edwards with her Stroudsburg, PA "brothers"BROS BEFORE HOSE

In the States, I was in a rut. I originally went to school to be a marine biologist, and then I went premed. I transferred schools and ran out of money. Then I found the fire department and fell in love. I was a firefighter in the States for four years, in the Poconos. There weren’t that many Jews in my area, and the one that I did find turned out to be gay and left me for my landlord, who lived upstairs.

The fire academy training lasted eight months. I still find it kind of challenging being a woman in a male-dominated field. A woman coming into a fire department is looking for a boyfriend or husband—or so goes the conventional wisdom. And I’m only 5’6”, I’m blonde, I’m not an Amazon. I had to prove myself.

I ended up graduating close to the top of my class. The guys in the States were like my family. Here, I’m working in the Kfar Saba station and I’m still feeling it out. Everybody’s really nice but I have to start all over again. Israel tends to be kind of chauvinistic sometimes. Although there are five female firefighters here, I’m the only paid one. The biggest professional difference between here and the States is the way firefighters in Israel respond when a call comes through. In the States, it’s immediate. It’s much more lax in Israel.

 

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire: Edwards is the one on the left

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

Every Israeli always asks, “Why did you move here?” They’re either happy, or they think you’re really confused, or they think you’re dumb.

Why did I move here? On the first day of my Birthright Trip, we went to the Wailing Wall. I didn’t know the protocol for approaching the Wall, but they told me to write a note and slip it into the cracks, so I wrote something about a close relative who had died. I went up and just started crying. It’s a very profound experience even if you’re not religious. This little old lady standing next to me grabbed my hand and whispered, “It’ll be okay.” That’s when I realized this was really going to mean something to me.

 

* * *

ALSO IN JEWCY

Not everyone finds the Holy Land so hospitable: Jeff Koyen explores why Israelis are pricks. In fact, fewer and fewer young American Jews think Zionism is relevant to their lives, says David Shneer, and maybe that's not the end of the world. (Stefan Kanfer disagrees.) Religious conservative David Klinghoffer thinks God would be OK with this development. But how can everyone ignore a country where the people, as Miriam Libicki ably documents, are so incredibly hot?

I just finished reading an article at Jpost about ‘The Conference on the Future of the Jewish People’ that took place in Jerusalem this week. Apparently the conference was opened with a speech about how “Young Jews don't identify with Jewish peoplehood and have no real sense of collective identity.” The woman who made that speech is getting her PhD at Brandeis, where, apparently, there aren’t any young Jews with a sense of peoplehood or collective identity.

First of all, peoplehood is not a word. Second of all, what the fuck?
Oh but wait, it gets worse:

Also on Tuesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the attendees of his vision of the Jewish world's future. He noted that not all Diaspora Jews intended to make aliya, and that Jewish identity within the State of Israel also needed to be strengthened.

Full Story

Great Scot! Not ALL Jews want to make aliyah? Why on earth not? I mean, okay, Israel does have a government that the World Bank calls “inefficient, with high levels of corruption and a low rate of law enforcement.” And yes, the highest religious authorities in Israel sometimes turn out to be into bribery and kidnapping. And yeah, there are riots breaking out in the ultra-Orthodox communities of Ramat Beit Shemesh Aleph and Bet because police removed signs requesting that all women in the area conform to certain standards of modest dress. And fine, yes, simply having a bank account in Israel is a huge pain in the ass, but really, it’s hard to understand why every diaspora Jew isn’t clamoring to get on a Nefesh b’Nefesh plane. And that’s not even considering the security situation/Palestinian conflict.
These are members of the peoplehood: I like to call them "Jews"
I love Israel. I really do. I’m a hardcore Zionist, I care deeply about “Jewish peoplehood” and I’m about as involved in the Jewish community as a person can be, but I’m totally uninterested in making aliyah anytime soon. There are, I guess, a lot of reasons for this, but mainly what prevents me from seriously considering life in Israel is the frustrating fact that in Israel, no matter where you go, you’re either a religious fanatic, or a complete heathen. It seems like the whole country is constantly positioning itself against whatever/whoever else happens to be present, and while I enjoy a contrary stance, it can be distracting and depressing to constantly have to identify oneself as not this, and not that. Whenever I’m in Israel, I feel like walking down the street in Jerusalem is just inviting the public to judge me, and inevitably everyone who walks by is either haredi, or secular enough that my covered shoulders indicate to them that I’m one of those obnoxious and weak religious people. And though I admit that there is a tangible spiritual intensity to being in Israel, I’m not sure it’s always a helpful or good thing. It makes people so much more combative and angry and convinced that God is absolutely on their side.

More and more young people are seeking out spirituality in their lives, and I’m confident that lots of them are looking into Judaism. They may not have a sense of “peoplehood” because they’ve been alienated by the non-religious community their whole lives. Maybe they’re “half-Jewish,” or maybe the only synagogue they ever went to was huge and impersonal and decorated in avocado and brown in 1976. And maybe they don’t want to move to Israel because their family and friends live in Wisconsin, and Israel’s political leader has an even lower approval rating that America’s political leader. I’m not sure we need to despair for those young people. There are a lot of problems to solve in the Jewish community, but a lack of “peoplehood” and a lack of unanimous desire to move to Israel are not even in my top ten.