Does such an entity as "the Jewish people" still exist? "Mosaic

N Atan Sharansky and Gil Troy do not mince their words in their account of divisions within the Jewish people today. They know everything that pessimists know, but that does not bother them. From a positive point of view, they see signs, in some of the latest statistics, that the Israeli diaspora and Jews retain an intuitive sense of community of people, which could serve as a foundation for a new institutional bulwark against corrosive tendencies that the authors wish to combat. And they firmly argue that a "Jewish People's Council" could not only achieve this goal, but also help find solutions to some of the most urgent problems of the Jews.

Many obstacles stand in the way of implementing the authors' proposal, but no one should dismiss Sharansky and Troy as unrealistic, especially in light of the legendary success of the old by beating the unlikely chances. The most useful answer to their essay would therefore be practical: tips on how to organize the board. If I had expertise in this area, I would call it now. But since I do not do it, I will have to do what comes to me more naturally, and make some reservations.

I wonder, for the first time, whether Sharansky and Troy do not make too many answers to questions of inquiry that affirm a common Jewish fate. Personally, I suspect that a large percentage of people who check the good box often do so without much ardor. How are they deficient? In The Road to September 1939 Jehuda Reinharz and Yaacov Shavit report that some of the leading Zionist delegates to the 1939 British talks on the future of Palestine could not afford to hire a limousine at Saint-Jacques Palace, where the discussions were to begin. So David Ben Gurion, Moshe Shertok and Nahum Goldmann hailed a taxi. " Zol zayn mit mazel!" [best of luck!] "

I guess maybe, but this pilot seems to me to be a member of the base of" amkha "imbued with the kind of Jewish solidarity at the gut that's fewer and fewer Jews are feeling today, at least in the diaspora. Many of them are disconnected, whatever they may say in response to questionnaires. If the Council of the Jewish People were to be born tomorrow, how many of them would care, or even know it?

Admittedly, there are a large number of Jews in the diaspora who are following the current developments and are deeply concerned about all that is happening in the Israeli-Palestinian discussions about arrangements for prayer at the Western Wall – a subject to which the authors rightly devote a whole part of their essay – to the status of reform and conservative Judaism in Israel. At present, these Jews do not have access to anything comparable to the forum that Sharansky and Troy propose to establish. But here's the question: if they did, would they make good use of it?

Sharansky and Troy write that ultimately, but not at first, the composition of the Council should to be decided by "broad popular elections." Who would be eligible to vote in? Our authors do not explicitly address this issue, but they "happily encourage all Jews interested in participating" in the "practical questions surrounding such elections", including how to determine "the eligibility of candidates".

But who is to determine the eligibility of voters – and who, after all, is Jewish? This, as they recognize towards the end of their essay, is "the hottest of all hot topics," and it would necessarily be decided before the full democratization of the Council. Presumably, the decision will be made by "Knesset members with existing representatives of major Jewish organizations around the world" who would take the first organizational steps. This debate would undoubtedly be controversial and perhaps crippling. The presence of Knesset members from different Israeli parties would seem to guarantee that much, but even the representatives of the diaspora would disagree.

Sharansky and Troy give a binary overview of the world Jewish community and present most of the Jews in the diaspora. Jews as "politically liberal and religiously unorthodox". As they are well aware, however, they are not all. Indeed, in organized Jewish life, the political conservative and the orthodox religious – the two do not always go together – play a disproportionate role. Would they be willing to accept electoral procedures that recognize Jewishness, for example, Reform Jews whose non-Jewish mothers originally never had a halakhic conversion appropriate to Judaism? Would Reformed Jews accept less?

Outside the Jewish state, this issue has been, so far, less of a burning issue than in Israel, precisely because in the diaspora, it has no direct political involvement. The effort to set up a quasi-political body like the non-legislative Jewish People's Council could it change that by replacing mutual indifference with rancorous hostility? Perhaps, to vote, the collective wisdom of a disparate group might find a way around the thorny issue of who is Jewish, but the fights would not stop there. The Council's power to issue non-binding advisory opinions would most likely create a brand new symbolic battlefield where struggles could take place on everything from conversion standards to Hebron status.

And to what extent would these struggles matter? Who would be listening? Sharansky and Troy evoke a world in which "Israelis and Jews in the diaspora could together reflect, formulate and press for the adoption of concerted strategies for a robust Jewish future." It should be noted, however, that in the last Haaretz [52%thinkthattheIsraelisdidnothavetherighttopubliclycriticizeIsrael

Of course, the creation of a Jewish People's Council could reduce the number of Israeli skeptics. by strengthening the prestige and good faith of members of the diaspora. It would therefore be unwise to proclaim in advance that the Council would be condemned to whistle in the dark. But it would not be wise either to badume in advance that the Council would have all the useful wisdom to give.

If, in the end, I support the proposition of Sharansky and Troy, despite my reservations, it is not so much because I am convinced that something concrete could derive from it – even if I do not do it I deny the possibility, and I confess to have found a basis of hope in the near success of the prayer initiative of the Wall of the I & 39; West told by the authors. On the contrary, I support it first and foremost because an effective and successful Jewish People's Council would belittle the small army of American and European academics who, in recent years, have insisted, as Caryn Aviv and David Shneer in . : The end of the Jewish diaspora that there is no longer any entity like the Jewish people and "that all Jews share one thing and one thing – they identify as Jews, whatever that means. "

All, the two skeptical writers ask: "What does a profane Jew of the upper middle clbad of Los Angeles have in common with a religious Jewish Sephardic laborer in Bnei Brak, except that each Is he Jewish? "If the Jewish People's Council existed, this question would be much easier to answer."

Which leads to the broader reason for wishing the success of the initiative: to quell the concerns of these Jews in Israel and to the diaspora who fears the pre If the stalemate sent announces a real break, it will simultaneously discourage all those who welcome a sign of weakening the collective will of the Jewish people.

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