Roundtable on Yossi Beilin's "The Death of the American Uncle": A Review

• Published in: Israel studies (Bloomington, Ind.) Ind.), 2000-04, Vol.5 (1), p.343-347
• Main Author: Eisen, Arnold
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arabs; Beilin, Yossi; Bergman, Yosef; Children; Conversation; Cultural identity; Culture; Diaspora; Grandfathers; Immigration; Jewish Americans; Jewish diaspora; Jewish people; Jewish peoples; Jews; Judaism; Literature; Minority & ethnic groups; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Noncitizens; Palestinian people; Politics; Rabbis; Religion; Review Essays: Roundtable on Yossi Beilin's "The Death of the American Uncle"; Social conditions & trends; Zionism
• ISSN: 1084-9513; 1527-201X; 1527-201X
• DOI: 10.1353/is.2000.0010

THERE ARE TWO AMERICAN RELATIVES who make appearances in [Yossi Beilin]'s call for a rethinking of the Israel-diaspora relationship, each of them at once real and fictitious. The first is the tabled aunt from Long Island who has reportedly been sending packages of food and clothing to her nephew in Israel, a friend of Beilin's, since the earliest days of the State. When told by her beneficiary in the 1970s that such assistance is no longer required, she replies, "You can never know," and adds the request that he "keep it for me." Beilin bears the aunt and those like her in America no ill will -- but warns his readers that there is a price to be paid for this pattern of Israel-diaspora relations. American Jewish philanthropy is not as important to Israel as it once was, and arguably does far more for the donor than the recipient. It certainly will not help world Jewry face up to the immense challenges that face it on the eve of the new century. Other answers are urgently required. Beilin's objective in this extremely thoughtful book is to provide them. Beilin understands that this rationale has far less force in America, not only because so many other options are available (especially the option of accepting one's other identity -- American -- as the whole of who one is), but because children of intermarriage inherit more than one identity, and so are not simply X or Y or anything. However, he seems if anything to underestimate the steep decline in national/ethnic identification detected by several recent surveys of American Jews, connected to the steady decline in attachment to the State of Israel. Nor does Beilin at all reckon with the possibility that Israel too may become far less a secure home for Jewish identity, far less a bulwark against assimilation and intermarriage, if -- as he fully expects -- the conflict with the Palestinians is soon solved, Israeli Arabs become better integrated into Israeli society, and so former enemies or strangers become eligible and attractive romantic partners. Indeed, given the plethora of Israeli initiatives in the areas of Jewish culture and non-Orthodox religion, one seems justified in concluding that many Israelis are already not content with the rationale for Jewishness that Beilin proposes. Here, I think, lies the most fertile ground in the short-term for Israel-diaspora conversation: not issues of national survival, addressed in the nature of the case by a small leadership elite, but the parallel yet different t