I just got back from Bloomington, Indiana. My first visit there. The place has always resonated in my mind because my parents’ best friends made aliyah, moving to Israel in 1968, after living in Bloomington. It wasn’t just the ’67 war that called them to Israel. Indiana was largely bereft of Jewishness, and it freaked them out. The father in that family was a brilliant scientist. He had trouble getting together a religious minyan in IN, and he worried that his kids would marry non-Jews if they grew up there. They were treated wonderfully in Indiana; but that wasn’t enough, they wanted a Jewish life. Israel.
The day I was there, the Indiana Daily Student had a picture of toddler Shlomo Weisenberg on the front page, in its coverage of the 7th annual "Israelpalooza" celebration at the school. "Celebrating 60 Years" was the headline– and of course there was no mention of the occupation or the treatment of Palestinians. While I was there I saw a girl walking around in an Indiana for Israel tshirt, and I met a member of the fine organization Brit Tzedek who told me that the impressive Shaul Magid is at Indiana. Indiana University is also home to Alvin Rosenfeld, who wrote the horrifying AJC report on anti-Zionism being a form of anti-semitism. Rosenfeld’s position is now reflected by the U.S. State Department, in its definition of antisemitism.
Stray impressions. But they are all important evidence that we are no longer outsiders. The fact that Indiana University now obviously feels like home to many Jews… The fact that Rosenfeld’s parochial position is echoed by the State Department… The fact that so many of the superdelegates are Jewish, as the Forward reports–
“Politics in America has become a Jewish profession, just like arts
and the law… We now are overrepresented in all these areas.”
There are just as few Jews in America as there were when I was a kid, more or less. But back then David Remnick’s father was a dentist; my friend Jim Cramer’s dad was a shopowner in Philadelphia; Joe Lieberman is 15 years older, but his dad was famously a bakery-truck driver; and so on. In my generation we’ve entered the establishment. And elite places in American society like Bloomington are havens for Jews. My people have not come to terms with this new identity, or responsibility.
