Policy Recommendations

Despite the way survey data are presented, what characterizes most American and Diaspora Jews today is not hard-and-fast opinions and attitudes. Rather, they are in the midst of an ongoing conversation with themselves and with other members of their community concerning Israel and their relation to it. They feel both pride and shame about Israel. They love Israel, but not its policies or its government. In other words, what most characterizes their attitudes is ambivalence, complexity, and contradiction. Again, this was expressed most directly by the participants themselves, and not only American ones. A participant from Australia acknowledged these self-contradictory feelings fully:

“There is no one clear-cut answer to the question, ‘Am I proud or am I ashamed?’ It’s incredibly complex, and being able to hold that complexity is probably the most truthful answer a young person in the Diaspora can obtain… You can hold both pride and shame. There doesn’t need to be an ‘or.’ Two truths can exist at the same time.”

In the language of social science, the situation of many Diaspora Jews is that of liminality, that is, of being “betwixt and between.” They seem to have left one mode of relating to Israel, but they have not yet crystallized a new alternative mode. We suggest that it is vital for the organizations of the organized Jewish community to play a constructive role in crystallizing new modes of relating to Israel based on honesty and integrity.

• On the basis of this situation, our major policy recommendation is that the organized Jewish community facilitate these inner conversations. It should provide open, inclusive, “safe” spaces where Jews can talk about their ambivalent and self-contradictory thoughts and feelings concerning Israel and the Diaspora’s relation to it. Ultimately, such conversations can also include thoughts and feelings about living in the Diaspora and its meaning and value. Many participants said that they do not have enough opportunities for such conversation. In fact, one participant from the Chicago Federation group referred to exactly this sentiment, expressing appreciation for the JPPI Dialogue: “Despite spending a lot of time in Jewish spaces, I don’t have this opportunity for the richness of this kind of Dialogue – especially in a multigenerational group – and so I wanted to say I appreciated the opportunity to listen and to learn and to engage in a conversation.” These opportunities for engagement should not be so unique and limited; the organized Jewish community should respond to this feeling by ensuring that such conversations are consistently included as part of regular programming. We expect that, out of such a process, a new positive equilibrium of Israel-Diaspora relations will emerge.
• Such facilitation should also include the preparation of materials – readings, discussion questions, etc. – by agencies that engage in Jewish education, especially adult Jewish education. The preparation of such materials and the facilitation of such inner conversations should be based on two principles: 1) that continued Israel-Diaspora ties are vital for continued Jewish flourishing; and 2) that such ties should be based on honesty and integrity.
• To help American Jews navigate this “liminal” period in which they are re-evaluating and reformulating their relationship to Israel and Israelis, it is important that they receive full and accurate information about Israel. This should include access to the experiences, emotions, and thoughts of Israelis. Too much is being lost in translation. Israelis do not fully understand the Diaspora experience, the increase in antisemitism, and how Israel is both a wedge issue and a political pawn. At the same time, far too many Jewish communal leaders are too quick to minimize the complexity of Israeli society and how Israelis must negotiate the tensions between Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state while living amid heightened geopolitical and security concerns.

To enable this, we recommend the following steps:

• In light of participants’ complaints that they are ignored by Israeli authorities, Israeli consuls and their professional staff should increase their contact with local Jewish communities and consider how better to share the Israeli perspective. This is important at a time when far too many Diaspora Jews do not fully grasp the Israeli reality and experience.
• Birthright, Israel gap-year programs, study-abroad programs, and Federation mission trips are uniquely situated to help Israelis and Diaspora Jews engage more deeply with one another. Israelis and Diaspora Jews should be part of one another’s programmatic experience, creating real connections (not in an abstract or theoretical manner) that allow Diaspora Jews and Israelis (Jews and non-Jews) to connect, build relationships, explore one another’s identities, lived realities, and pressures, and understand one another in a more significant way.
• At a larger scale, major organizations such as Federations, Hillel, and JAFI should create a joint initiative for world Jewry that centers on a year of service in Israel and in Diaspora communities. This would allow Diaspora Jews to engage deeply in Israeli society, with all of its complexity, challenges, and opportunities, and Israelis to spend significant time in Diaspora communities learning and engaging with what it means to be a minority and what it means to center one’s Jewishness and Jewish values as the operating system in a non-Jewish framework.
• Special programs should be created for Jewish community leadership (from JCCs, Federations, day schools, rabbis of major congregations, etc.) to engage much more deeply with Israelis, and vice versa. These programs could be arranged on a professional basis (i.e., lawyers with lawyers, university professors with university professors) or by community (e.g., a community in Raanana, Rechovot, or Efrat could host a rabbinical delegation).

Endnotes

1. Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, 1997, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

2. Yehuda Halevi. The Kuzari: In Defence of the Despised Faith, New York, Feldheim, 2013.

3. David Manchester and Meg Siritzky, JFNA 2025 Survey of Jewish Life Since October 7.

4. The questionnaire was administered as part of the JPPI Voice of the Jewish People initiative, which conducts monthly surveys of Diaspora Jews. Some participants experienced technical difficulties stemming from the use of that platform outside its usual frame.