Does Radical Ignorance Deserve a Seat at the Table?

It takes a certain kind of chutzpah to play basketball during class—even more so when the basketball court is within earshot of the classroom. And yet that’s how my two friends spent many of our grade 11 history classes. To my astonishment, our teacher never made a fuss; she must have resigned herself to the fact that those two boys just weren’t that into history.

Unsurprisingly, this prompted the occasional argument among my friends about the importance of such a subject. But while I always felt right in defending the need to understand our past, I’d never managed to put it as succinctly as Peter Beinart did at a 2019 debate with Daniel Gordis (this was, of course, before Beinart jumped down the anti-Zionist rabbit hole). Discussing the younger generation’s dwindling connection to Israel, Beinart suggested that American Jews, particularly younger generations, suffer from “radical ignorance” of their own history. He went even further, and, rather bluntly, described American Jewry as “the largest and … most ignorant world Jewish community … that’s ever existed.”

Ouch.

While the radical experiment of Jewish life in the United States has indeed borne unimaginable fruits, it’s also come at a great cost.

He’s not all that wrong. While the radical experiment of Jewish life in the United States has indeed borne unimaginable fruits, it’s also come at a great cost. And now we’re seeing the results, as the divide between mainstream American Jews, most of whom profess some kind of support for Israel, and Jews who are increasingly critical of, and at times outright hostile to, Israel ratchets up in intensity.

The recent survey of American Jewish voters, which found that 22 percent believe “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians,” should have come as little surprise. The key question, then, is why do so many American Jews believe Israel is guilty of committing the worst crime known to mankind? It has, in fact, very little to do with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, which, at times, is most certainly deserving of criticism. After all, the idea that Israel is committing genocide is so absurd that one could question whether it even deserves a proper rebuke.

But if the issue at hand isn’t the conflict itself, then what is? None better encapsulate the issue than Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, who lambasted such findings as signaling “a colossal, catastrophic failure of the American Jewish establishment: Rabbis, teachers, schools—all of us.”

Again, ouch.

And herein lies the problem. While the widening divide between Israel and American Jewry carries with it a long and complex history, fantastical accusations of genocide have far more to do with what Beinart and Hirsch identified: education, or the lack thereof. This is even more evident among younger American Jews. A survey by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 9% of voters agreed with the statement, “Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.” But among voters under 40, it was 20%. Meanwhile, a third of younger voters agreed that Israel is committing genocide.

This lines up with a 2020 Pew survey of American Jewry, which reported that younger generations have both a weaker connection to Israel and their Jewish identity on a whole. So, too, did it find that Jews with little affiliation to the community were less likely to have visited Israel or care deeply for the Jewish state.

Clearly, education is a major determining factor, as was highlighted by Adina Bankier-Karp, a research fellow at the Orthodox Union’s Center for Communal Research. Comparing a 2017 survey of Australian Jewry with the Pew survey, Bankier-Karp noted stark differences regarding Jewish education and connection to Israel.

Evidently, higher levels of Jewish education manifest in stronger relationships with the Jewish state.

“Australian Jews,” she found, “are much more likely than Americans to report having received a Jewish day school education (51 per cent versus 24 per cent).” Astonishingly, secular Jewish Australians “were more than three times as likely as their US counterparts to have received a Jewish day school education.” Bankier-Karp elaborated further, noting that while 76 percent of Australian Jews have visited Israel more than once, only 26 percent of American Jews have done so. The findings were largely the same regarding emotional attachment to Israel and the extent to which each community follows Israeli affairs. Evidently, higher levels of Jewish education manifest in stronger relationships with the Jewish state.

In the 2019 debate with Daniel Gordis, Beinart succinctly captured the problem, explaining that the “American Jewish community has not really equipped … younger American Jews to even make an informed decision.” Ultimately, Beinart lamented, “they’ve not even been educated to understand what it is that they’re giving up.”

Fast forward two years, however, and instead of proposing education as a tool in bridging the divide between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, Beinart, in a September essay for Jewish Currents, suggests that “the first step” in mending the gap “is for the American Jewish establishment to reconsider its assumption that anti-Zionism is incompatible with a concern for Jewish safety.”

Ironically, he simultaneously admits that “most unaffiliated American Jews are disconnected from Zionism,” and even notes Pew’s discovery that “Jewish BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] supporters were less than half as likely to say they feel a ‘great deal’ of belonging to the Jewish people,” or that “they feel a responsibility to help Jews in need around the world.”

In other words, Beinart identified a portion of American Jewry who are openly indifferent toward the Jewish people, and at times hostile toward the Jewish state. Yet rather than issuing a clarion call to revamp Jewish education across the U.S. in order to prevent the spread of such dangerous sentiments, Beinart wants to validate the beliefs of these admittedly disconnected and uninformed Jews by giving them a seat at the table with mainstream Jewish organizations.

The Jewish tent should be as big as possible. But in order for the conversation to be productive, those taking part must be educated on their people’s history.

The Jewish tent should be as big as possible. But in order for the conversation to be productive, those taking part must be educated on their people’s history. Beinart is right in identifying this dangerous chasm among American Jews, but in calling for mainstream Jewish organizations to elevate the voices of those most detached from the Jewish community, he is legitimating the idea that Jewish education is a negligible prerequisite for having a say in our people’s future.

Thankfully, those two friends of mine who skipped history class have turned out just fine. As for those young American Jews who Beinart identified as having never even been presented with such an opportunity? I think we know the answer.

Josh Feldman is an Australian writer who focuses primarily on Israeli and Jewish issues. Twitter: @joshrfeldman