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Friday September 13, 1996

Year of change and contradiction gives U.S. Jews pause...as ties with Israel move one step forward, one back

YOSEF I. ABRAMOWITZ
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

BOSTON -- Several thousand women, many wrapped in prayer shawls and some wearing tefillin, packed the Miami conference hall in four large clusters, each one surrounding an open Torah scroll. They chanted blessings and read from the Bible. Many were crying. More than 120 of them became b'not Mitzvah.

This was no marginal, radical feminist retreat, but the first annual bat mitzvah ceremony at the National Convention of Hadassah. Yes, Hadassah.

"The time has come to not only meet Israel's needs, but to stand tall and meet our spiritual needs as well," said Leah Reicin, co-chairwoman of the July conference and initiator of the ceremony.

As the year 5756 draws to a close, not every Jewish organization is as certain of its changing mission.

Caught between the vicissitudes of Israel's changing political landscape and the growing local needs of American Jews, the community marches uncomfortably to an uneven beat.

"It seems that we took one step forward and one step back on nearly every front," says Charles Glick, director of government affairs at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.

"First we went out and tried to convince everyone that Shimon Peres was not crazy for wanting to return the Golan Heights, and now with Benjamin Netanyahu in power, we have to go out and tell our people that we were wrong," said Rabbi Alan Silverstein, immediate past president of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement.

While most American Jews favored the path to peace pursued by Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, they also were quick to express confidence in Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu after he narrowly defeated Peres in the May election, according to a poll conducted by the Israel Policy Forum.

Although mainstream organizations were somewhat circumspect in public comment as they adjusted to the dramatic change in Israel's leadership, some American Jewish spokesmen were less reserved.

Longtime Likud supporters, of course, were gleeful.

"With Peres, we were on the edge of the abyss," said Herb Zweibon, director of Americans for a Safe Israel, a right-wing group. "Now with Netanyahu, we are 10 steps back from the edge but still not out of danger" of creating a Palestinian state.

The assassination of Rabin Nov. 4 brought American Jews together in memorial services across the country. They gathered to show respect for the slain Israeli leader, demonstrate solidarity in support of the Jewish state and call for an end to the hateful rhetoric that had served as the backdrop to the days leading up to the first modern assassination of a Jewish leader by a fellow Jew.

Still, the renewed calls for unity in support of the Israeli government could not diminish the divisions among American Jewry over the peace process or the pain felt as two young Jewish students -- Matthew Eisenfeld and Sara Duker -- were killed in one of a series of Hamas suicide bus bombings in Israel.

"Rabin's assassin may have succeeded in killing the peace process," said Tom Smerling, director of Project Nishma, a left-wing group in Washington, D.C.

While the peace process dominated the Israel-diaspora agenda, there was also movement around the issue of religious pluralism, an issue much higher on the agenda of American Jews than their Israeli counterparts.

To the satisfaction of many American Jews, the Israeli Supreme Court opened the way for the Reform and Conservative movements to conduct conversions in Israel, but left the ultimate resolution of the issue to the Knesset.

Hopes of further progress on the pluralism front were dashed in the aftermath of the Knesset elections. Three Orthodox parties gained control of more seats -- 23 out of 120 -- than ever before, a stunning victory that also made them natural partners in the new coalition.

"This will put pluralism, and Israel-diaspora relations, back 25 years," predicted Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, a Jewish thinker and writer.

One step forward, one step back.

On the domestic front, the religious freedom concerns of most Jews were endangered by an emboldened right-wing Christian political movement, said Richard Foltin, legislative director of the American Jewish Committee.

Although its efforts have so far failed, "it's only a matter of time before something really threatening the separation of church and state does come through, because the leadership of Congress wants it," says Foltin.

There was legislative progress: preservation of refugee quotas for Jews from the former Soviet Union and maintenance of the annual $3 billion in foreign aid to Israel.

Anti-Semitism seemed to wane as well. Officially, anti-Semitic incidents fell 11 percent, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Meanwhile, two Holocaust documentaries won Oscars.

Still, Islamic fundamentalists threatened to kill more than 1,000 American Jewish executives; Southern Baptists vowed to try to convert Jews; Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whom many Jews call anti-Semitic, won new standing in the African-American community by leading October's Million Man March (that about 500,000 attended) in Washington; and Marlon Brando kvetched on "Larry King Live" that Jews control Hollywood because films never show "the kike" stereotype.

"There is a renaissance of conspiracy theories that highlight anti-Semitism," says Abraham Foxman, Anti-Defamation League national director. "From Buchanan, from Farrakhan, from the militias and from the Islamic fundamentalists."

Cyberspace has been a mixed blessing.

"There used to be a time when you would have to go and look for anti-Semitic materials like you would look for pornography," Foxman says. "Today, anyone can sit at home and just find it with a flick of a mouse."

Yet Jewish Web sites registered more than 3 million hits, or visits, a month, with at least half coming from Orthodox-leaning Internet surfers. America Online's Jewish site registered 300,000 hits a month, mostly in chat groups of young and unaffiliated Jews looking to connect.

For most of the 5.8 million Jews in the United States, however, communal life was not driven by an evolving political or social agenda, but by the rhythm of life-cycle events.

Some 77,000 Jewish babies were born. Kaddish was said for the first time for about 87,000 Jews. Nearly 34,000 mixed-faith couples and 16,000 Jewish couples took their wedding vows. An estimated 43,000 B'not Mitzvah read from the Torah.

And as the Hadassah women demonstrated, it was also a year when the yearning for spirituality drove the lives of many American Jews.

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