Subtitle: Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel
Author: Jerold S. Auerbach
Subject: Jewish Studies/American History
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2917-4
Pages: 224 pp.
Description: The first book to explore both the history and the current state of relations between American and Israeli Jews.
"An immensely important revisionist critique. Must reading for anyone interested in American Jewry, Israel, and the relationship between them. Part history, part sober analysis, part cri de coeur, this is a book that dispels old pieties and offers a disturbing,
unforgettable vision of Zionism's future."--Jonathan D. Sarna, Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University
"Impassioned, brilliant, and elegantly written, this explosive book articulates misgivings and apprehensions fairly widespread in the Jewish world for many years but rarely expressed openly. A very important book--one of the two or three necessary and indispensable utterances on its subject in the past quarter-century."--Edward Alexander, author of Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew
What binds together Jews of Israel and the United States? Amid the hope and frustration generated by the Middle East peace process, the meaning of Jewish statehood is more vigorously contested than ever before. A secular democratic Israel, responsive to Western liberal values, is prepared to make peace with the Palestinians by sacrificing its own historic homeland. But a covenantal Israel, which draws its Jewish identity from divine promise and the biblical narrative, refuses to surrender to modern imperatives. As the very nature of Jewish statehood has become ever more polarized, American Jewish life has been profoundly affected by this fateful Zionist contradiction.
In Are We One? Jerold S. Auerbach presents a surprising new interpretation
of this contemporary Jewish dilemma. His conclusion that the modern Jewish impulse to embrace Western values exacts a terrible price stems from a brilliant reassessment of Zionism and a challenging analysis of the sources of the identification of American Jews with Israel.
In a ringing indictment that is sure to spark controversy, he argues that the eagerness of secular Israelis to import American culture reflects their sweeping rejection of Jewish and Zionist values. Indeed, the diminishing number of Israelis who actually remain faithful to Jewish religious and historical imperatives are denigrated as fundamentalist zealots by Israeli and American Jews alike. Present-day Israel now exhibits such Jewish self-loathing, that it has depleted its own ability to inspire world Jewry.
Drawing upon original historical analysis and extensive personal experience in Israel, Auerbach invites readers to consider the debilitating consequences of an adulterated Jewish identity in Israel and in the United States for the very future of Judaism.
Jerold S. Auerbach is a professor of history at Wellesley College. His books on Jewish subjects include Jacob's Voices and Rabbis and Lawyers. Professor Auerbach has been a Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Lecturer at Tel Aviv University.
Excerpt from Are We One?
"If we--American Jews and Israelis--are indeed one, what now defines our unity? The attachment may have originated in our ancestral heritage or sacred texts, but these sources have lost their vitality to Jewish identity in the modern era. Toward such traditional sources of Jewish inspiration and renewal, increasing numbers of Jews in both countries are abysmally ignorant, willfully indifferent, or overtly hostile. Rather, most American Jews and Israelis--except for the Orthodox minorities in both countries--seem to share a determination to dilute Judaism with an American infusion of free-choice individualism."
