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U.S. Jews not turning their backs on Israel, says Jewish Agency's Sharansky
Jewish Agency chairman says reality on the ground contradict abstract points made by pundits.
(Haaretz) -- by Raphael Ahren --
The state of Israel is occupying an increasingly large place in the hearts and minds of American Jews, Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky said this week, contradicting the widespread notion that large segments of American Jewry are slowly but surely turning their backs on the Jewish state.
"Of course there are arguments about whether this policy or that policy is more productive, but basically there is no question that Israel is playing more and more a central role in the identity of American Jewry, and that American Jewry needs Israel as the best tool to guarantee its own survival as a Jewish [community]," Sharansky told Haaretz on Wednesday.
"There are long lines for Birthright Israel and Masa and other projects bringing Jewish kids to Israel, and the lines are getting longer," he added. "Most of those kids who go to Israel certainly call themselves liberal Jews."
Sparked by an essay by Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books, a debate erupted recently about a perceived growing schism between American Jewry and Israel. Beinart wrote that the children of secular Zionists in the U.S. who supported the state during its first decades do not share their parents' attachments.
Especially among the non-Orthodox and liberal Jews, attachment to Israel is steadily declining, Beinart and a number of sociologists agree.
Speaking to Haaretz by telephone from California, Sharansky rejected the distancing hypothesis put forward by sociologists. "These are abstract articles, I'm speaking about realities," he said, referring to Beinart's essay.
"I just spent two days in San Francisco and spoke to the leaders of the [Jewish] Federation there. The main task they face now is figuring out how to send all those who want to go to Israel on short trips and long trips."
The Jews of San Francisco are "probably the most liberal Jews in the country," Sharansky said, "and they feel they need Israel for their own survival as Jews. There's no need to debate abstract points, when the fact of the matter is that the focus of the work of the most liberal Federation is how to send as many young Jews as possible to Israel."...MORE...LINK
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That's one ugly lizard: Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky says chameleon-like Jewish-American Zionists may operate as liberals, but actually they're Jewish supremacists dedicated to the Judeofascist state and its works
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