American Jews have a problem. They make the wrong choices

Essayists have been writing about the relationship between Jews in America and Israel. They say Israel is at risk because it drives away American Jews.

They're wrong. It's not Israel that’s at risk. It's America's Jews.

 Essayists say American Jews no longer support Israel with unquestioning loyalty ("The growing gap between Israel and American Jews", moment, November 20, 2017). They've changed, the argument goes. Their feelings toward Israel now run closer to anger and distaste (ibid), not love.

The underlying assumption here is, American Jews today feel only shame and contempt for Israel (Chemi Shalev, "Liberal American Jews' feelings towards Israel now include conspicuous contempt", haaretz, September 11, 2017). They believe Israel has behaved with such ‘self-degradation and auto-humiliation’ that it has 'gone off the rails' (ibid).

What’s Israel done? It's filled itself with values American Jews can’t tolerate (ibid). 

Apparently, Israel has rejected its core values. Israel no longer wants peace with 'Palestinians'. American Jews still do. Israel's leaders are uncouth and ignorant (ibid). America’s Jews demand better.

Worst of all, Israel has become fanatical. It chooses religion over democracy (ibid). That is unacceptable.

That the majority of American Jews cannot identify with Israel comes as no surprise to those who understand the difference between Jews in America and Jews in Israel. Jews in Israel have little to do with Conservative and Reform Judaism, two religious streams that have little-to-nothing to do with the Jewish nature of Judaism. In Israel, only 5% of Jews identify as Reform or Conservative. But in America, fully 53% of Jews identify as Reform or Conservative ("American and Israeli Jews: Twin portraits from Pew Research Center surveys", pewresearchcenter, January 24, 2017).

That choice has consequences. For example, while 98% Israeli Jews say they are married to a Jew, only 44% of American Jews say they are married to a Jew. Indeed, Reform Judaism allows ("does not prevent") its rabbis to perform marriages between a Jew and a non-Jew ("What is the Reform position on officiating at the wedding of a Jew to a non-Jew", reformjudaism, no date, retrieved November 20, 2017).

The consequence of such behavior is a Reform intermarriage rate that approaches 70% (Sandy Goodman, "Bad news for the Jews, bad for America", huffingtonpost, May 26, 2015). In Israel, that rate is negligible.

Is it possible that one reason American Jews increasingly express distaste for Israel is that American Jews are increasingly not Jewish?

Then there's the question of political beliefs. Only 8% of Israelis identify themselves as Leftists. This means that, in Israel, the Left as a viable political force is, essentially, dead (Daniel Greenfield, "Why Israeli Jews are conservative and American Jews are Leftists", frontpagemag, March 17, 2016).

By contrast, 49% of Americans identify as Leftists.

How did America's Jews get so Leftist? They were led there by their leadership (Kobi Erez, "The religion of social justice", timesofisrael, March 29, 2017).

For too long in America, Judaism has been shunted aside. The American Jewish establishment has taught young Jews to turn away from Judaism to adapt instead social justice, something that is not dictated by G-d or by the Torah, but by the leaders of that same Jewish establishment (Erez, ibid).  It worked. American youth (18-26) choose social justice for their religion, not Judaism.

Disengaged from its core religious values, the majority of America's Jews pulls away from the Jewish state.  This majority  promotes 'social justice'. Too many identify with ‘Palestinians’, not Israel (Rotem Starkman, “Israel isn’t a brand some American Jews want to identify with”, haaretz, January 17, 2016).

Since the time of the first Jewish Redemption from Egyptian bondage (slavery), Jews have yearned for freedom. But the Left betrays these Jews. It talks about freedom--but sells bondage. It asks Jews to vote for State control over freedom.

For a century, Leftists around the world have “patiently infiltrated the institutions of influence; Academia, Media, Politics, and the Church. They have operated in the shadows, advancing lies as truth. This past decade has seen what [looks like] the beginning of the final battle between light and darkness. Between freedom and bondage” (Earick Ward, “Plato’s cave and our current reality”, americanthinker, November 19, 2017).

This struggle between freedom vs bondage isn't new. We've seen it before, in the Biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt.

In that ancient Biblical Egypt, Jews had to choose between bondage (remaining in Egypt with non-Jews) or freedom (following the Jewish Moshe—Moses--into the desert).

We know how that former struggle ended: 80% of Egypt's Jews rejected the Jewish Moshe--and what he stood for. They remained with the non-Jews.

Do America's Jews now make the same choice? 

It isn’t American-Israel Jewish 'ties' that fray. It's American Jewry that frays. Its leadership makes the wrong choices, then sells those choices as ‘Judaism’, and ‘pro-Israel’ fakery.