In the Chicago Tribune, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, who calls on American Jews to support the peace process, says that Israel is Jews’ "spiritual home."
Our community has always stood with Israel, our spiritual home. We’ve
prayed for peace, for the security of her people, for justice. Whenever
Israel has needed us, we’ve been ready and willing to offer anything
necessary to ease her plight.
Israel is not my spiritual home. America is, and a little of Russia and Eastern Europe, Bukovina and Bialystok. Those were the places my grandparents and great-grandparents were born. Israel is largely a mythology of the 20th century, with Holocaust overtones. I’ve been there and don’t feel a special connection to it. Though Jerusalem does stir my bible-feelings, both Old and New Testament, the "plight" I saw there was Arabs’ plight. You say I’m assimilating, but Wolf’s casual description, printed without demurral in a major newspaper, at a time when younger Jews feel alienation from Israel, is a recipe for dual loyalty and the fervent grasp of the Israel lobby on our politics. Yes I know; for many Jews it is a spiritual home, I understand that; but let’s start growing some diversity, the future of my spiritual home depends on it…
