What imprint will the fight over the Iran deal leave on
organized American Jewish life? Much is still not clear. But this much
is: If you thought young American Jews were alienated from their
communal elders before, just wait.
Older American Jews are closely split on the Iran
nuclear agreement. Younger American Jews are not; they support it
overwhelmingly. According to a late July poll by the Jewish Journal
(the only one I’ve seen that breaks down Jewish opinion by age),
American Jews under 40 back the deal by 34 percentage points, almost
twice the margin among American Jews as a whole.
But what’s most important isn’t merely the fact
that younger American Jews back a deal that the most powerful American
Jewish organizations oppose. It’s the reason why. The American Jewish
establishment’s response to the Iran deal is a case study in the
attitudes and behaviors that have been alienating young American Jews
for years.
Think about the assumptions that underpin the
American Jewish leadership’s antipathy to the deal. First, that an
Iranian nuclear weapon, or even an Iranian nuclear weapons’ capability,
poses an “existential” threat to Israel. Listening to establishment
American Jewish leaders, you’d never know that Israel has its own
nuclear arsenal, capable of being delivered by air, land and sea to
ensure maximum deterrence. Instead, American Jewish leaders endlessly imply
that Israel’s Jews are defenseless against a potential Holocaust.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and Abe Foxman, the
recently departed head of the Anti-Defamation League, have both compared today’s era to the 1930s.
Younger American Jews don’t believe that.
(As it happens, neither does Israel’s security establishment). Because
young American Jews have experienced less personal anti-Semitism than
their parents and grandparents and because they’ve grown up seeing
Israel as a regional superpower, they’re more skeptical of claims that
Israel’s enemies are about to destroy it. In 2010, when the Jewish
Theological Seminary’s Jack Wertheimer compared attitudes among older,
establishment American Jewish leaders to the views of those younger
leaders who had created new Jewish organizations, he found that the
latter were 36 points less likely to see combatting threats to Israeli security as central to their Jewish identity. A 2007 study
of the new religious communities formed by young American Jews found
that they dwelled less on memories of Jewish victimhood, like the
Holocaust, than on memories of Jewish moral obligation, like civil
rights and labor movements.
If the specter of another Holocaust is one
narrative underlying the American Jewish establishment’s opposition to
the Iran deal, uncritical support for the Israeli government is another.
In the American Jewish establishment, it’s an article of that faith
that when it comes to Israeli security, American Jews should not
second-guess Israel’s leaders. And they should do their best to ensure
that the United States government does not either.
Most younger American Jews reject that. It’s partly because they’re less tribal. A 2010 study
of committed younger American Jews found that, “they see supporting the
state of Israel as obligatory only insofar as the state acts in
accordance with highest principles of democracy, tolerance, human
rights, and Jewish ethical values as they understand them.” And most
younger American Jews don’t think this Israeli government embodies those
principles. According to the sociologist Steven M. Cohen, who conducted
the study, the same Jewish Journal poll that found young American Jews
overwhelmingly supportive of the Iran agreement also found that almost
two-thirds don’t consider Netanyahu’s government serious about peace
with the Palestinians. (That’s almost twice the rate of American Jews
over 65).
Young American Jews are also more thoroughly
American. When the pollster Frank Luntz surveyed younger American Jewish
opinion about Israel in 2003, his number one lesson was that “most of our respondents … reserve the right to question the Israeli position.”
His lesson number two was that “young Jews tend to view themselves as
Americans first and Jewish second.” For top American Jewish leaders,
U.S. President Barack Obama’s statement that members of Congress should
judge the Iran deal based on whether its serves “the national interests
of the United States,” smacked of anti-Semitism. For many younger American Jews, it’s self-evident.
Finally, many young American Jews resent the way
the organized American Jewish community limits free discussion about
Israel. Two years ago, Jewish college students created “Open Hillel” to challenge
the restrictions Hillel imposes on which speakers Jewish groups can
bring to campus. But in their fight against the Iran deal, American
Jewish organizations have exhibited the same secretive, anti-democratic
tendencies that young American Jews find so alienating. In Los Angeles,
according to the Jewish Journal, a handful of members of the executive
committee determined that the Federation would oppose the Iran deal “without consulting the larger 45-person Federation board or, of course, the community at large.”
In declaring its opposition to the agreement, The Jewish Federation of Greater Miami declared
that “this issue must remain above politics and reflect our collective
determination to ensure moral clarity and absolute resolve in dealing
with one of the world’s most dangerous regimes.” In other words, open
debate inside the Jewish community about the Iran deal constitutes
“politics,” which is a bad thing.
Just because young American Jews believe
something, of course, doesn’t make it right. If American Jewish leaders
sincerely oppose the Iran agreement, one can’t fault them for doing what
they believe is right. But many of those same leaders have spent the
last few years agonizing over the generational divide in American Jewish
life. It’s almost certain now that the struggle those leaders have
waged against the Iran deal will fail. But in their ongoing efforts to
alienate their own children and grandchildren from the institutions
they’ve built, they will have succeeded all too well.
