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The Shekel Before the Storm GA Magazine / The patriotism that dare not speak its name By Jordana Miller Tags: zionism, GA, Israel news  Full coverage of the 2008 GA conference Karen Fruchtman, a stay-at-home mother of three, liked what she calls her "life on the little cul-de-sac" in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield. She and her husband David, a partner in a law firm, knew little about Israel and felt no religious motivation to live there. But as the couple read up on the country's history and attended lectures on life in Israel, David became so drawn to the idea of contributing to the Jewish people and living in a Jewish state that he suggested aliyah. Religion, Karen says, had almost nothing to do with it. Advertisement "We could be modern-day halutzim [pioneers] and give something to Israel," Karen recalls him saying. One of her first reactions was to inform her husband she wasn't interested in becoming Orthodox. But as he reassured her that living in Israel would be enough, she eventually overcame her reservations. Full of the nationalist fervor that motivated the secular Zionists who drained Israel's swamps and established its kibbutzim, the Fruchtmans moved to Zichron Yaakov, an hour north of Tel Aviv, in August 2005. Three decades ago, when about 65 percent of American immigrants to Israel were non-Orthodox, the Fruchtmans would not have been all that unusual. But now, as that rate has shrunk to an estimated 20 percent, according to sociologist Chaim Waxman, it is increasingly rare to find immigrants who move to Israel not because they are motivated by religious faith or pushed out by financial or political instability, but just because they are - dare the word be spoken aloud? - Zionists. And when non-Orthodox Zionists do move to Israel, they often find themselves brushing up against a reluctance on the part of secular Israelis, especially leftist ones, to identify with the term "Zionism," which many consider outdated or too closely associated with the right wing. "I absolutely think 'Zionism' is a dirty word to Israelis," says Anita Shapira, a history professor at Tel Aviv University's Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel. "'Zionism' has been appropriated by the right and vilified by anti-Semites on the left. The time has passed for this term." Shapira, who prefers the term "Israeli patriotism" to "Zionism," says the majority of Israelis are secular Zionists who want a Jewish and democratic state in Israel. They just don't want to refer to themselves by using the Z-word, she says, in part because of its association with what she calls the "religious extremism" of the right. Indeed, for native Israelis like secular, left-wing Jerusalemites Oded, who runs an alternative medicine clinic, and Hadas, a teacher in her early 30s, "Zionist" is a something of a foreign concept. "I don't know if I'm a Zionist," says Hadas. "It's a word I don't use. I don't think anybody uses that word." Like Shapira, Oded, who is in his 30s, considers himself a patriotic Israeli rather than a Zionist - a term he associates with the era of the state's establishment and the settlement movement, with which he doesn't want to be grouped. "'Zionist' is very much a Diaspora notion," says Oded. "I'm Israeli." Filling the void The State of Israel was by and large built by secular Labor Zionists - the men and women who, inspired by a combination of socialist values and national yearning, sailed from Europe to the Middle East to drain the swamps and plow the fields. While they were far from a monolithic group, Labor Zionists were united in their belief that Jews had an inalienable right to be a free and independent people in their historic homeland. Inspired by Theodor Herzl's call for a Jewish state or A.D. Gordon's utopia of kibbutzim or David Ben-Gurion's hopes for a Jewish economy, Labor Zionists ended up "creating a brand-new nation and cutting ties with Judaism," says Israel Bartal, the dean of Hebrew University's faculty of humanities and a professor of Jewish history. At the turn of the 20th century, many religious Jews refused to take part in the Jewish nationalist project, claiming only the Messiah, not man, could usher in the divine redemption implied in a return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. But the 1960s saw a major reversal: the 30-year peak of Labor Zionism halted at the beginning of the decade, according to Bartal, while religious Zionism hit its stride after the 1967 Six-Day War. At that point, Israel's capture of Jewish holy sites like the Western Wall and the city of Hebron, where the Cave of the Patriarchs is located, convinced many religious Jews they could no longer sit on the sidelines of Zionism (although the ultra-Orthodox by and large remain non-Zionist). Now religious settlers say they are the "true embodiment" of Zionism, notes Bartal. Socialist Zionism has disappeared, he says, leaving a void in its place that a contemporary form of secular Zionism has yet to fill. 'Moral lepers' no more One manifestation of that change is the fate of the word "yored," the ideologically loaded term for an Israeli who moves abroad. During the 1970s, Yitzhak Rabin called Israeli emigrants "moral lepers," "the fallen among the weaklings" and "the dregs of the earth" - but recanted those comments by 1992. "It used to be that it was the worst thing you could be was a yored, someone who jumped ship," says Oren Harman, a social historian who produced a documentary series exploring Israeli identity called "Herzl Said That?" "But now the word has literally disappeared from the lexicon," says Harman, an assistant professor at Bar-Ilan University. "People don't look down on people anymore who leave the country for jobs in hi-tech or academia." Indeed, immigrants like Karen Fruchtman have discovered that rather than looking down on fellow Israelis who leave the country, some sabras look askance at those who arrive. Fruchtman, a Conservative Jew in her 40s, was used to getting surprised looks whenever she told her acquaintances in Chicago that her family was planning to move to Israel, but she thought that incredulity would be behind her once she arrived. Instead, she discovered the gulf that separates the Zionists she and her husband had read about from the flesh-and-blood Israelis they encountered. After hearing that Fruchtman had moved here from the United States, one Israeli mother told her as they waited for their children to get out of school: "I just think you're crazy." "All I wanted," recalls Fruchtman about her hope for what life would be like after moving to Israel, "was to be in a place where no one thought I was crazy." But Fruchtman does not have demographics on her side. Demographer Sergio DellaPergola, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says Orthodox Jews are significantly overrepresented among American immigrants to Israel. "About 10 percent of U.S. Jews are Orthodox, but close to 80 percent of those moving to Israel are religious," he says. "That's eight times their population." Because so many of the Americans immigrating to Israel are Orthodox, Nefesh B'Nefesh, the nonprofit group aimed at helping Jews in America, Canada and England move here, has designed programs targeting non-Orthodox Jews who may also be interested in making the move. Tzvi Richter, the organization's director of guidance and community resources, says it's important to attract non-Orthodox immigrants - who currently comprise only 30 percent of families that move here with Nefesh B'Nefesh but 60 percent of singles who do so - because more heterogeneous groups of immigrants can make more diverse contributions to Israel. He says the post-aliyah assistance Nefesh B'Nefesh provides, such as help with employment, education and military service, is often more important for the non-Orthodox because they tend to have fewer contacts already living here. One reason it's harder for non-Orthodox Jews to make aliyah, says Waxman, the sociologist, is that they are typically lacking the "very strong religio-ethnic reasons" that bring the Orthodox here, despite the comforts of America. "The more religious, the more likely they want to live in Jewish neighborhoods," says Waxman, who specializes in American Jewish immigration to Israel and serves as a fellow at the Jewish People's Planning Policy Institute. "Part of the reason they want to live in Israel is to be with other Jews. So that's the ethnic part. The religious part is that they believe the Land of Israel is the historical Eretz Yisrael, the promised land that belongs to the Jews." But for all that, there are still some non-Orthodox Zionists making their way to the land that Herzl helped will into being. Joyce Boll, a 40-plus independent broadcast producer from New York, says religion had nothing to do with her decision to move to Israel two years ago. "Judaism isn't the right, or only, religion," says Boll, who was married to a Lebanese Christian man for nearly a decade before they got divorced. "That's not what it's about for me. It's about self-identity. I feel natural here." Boll grew up in a secular home with a strong connection to Israel, in which her father, a Holocaust survivor, emphasized the importance of the country as a haven for Jews. She moved to Tel Aviv in 2006 to work as a consultant for a 3-D animation startup. Full coverage of the 2008 GA conference Boll is used to having native Israelis ask her why she would leave New York for Tel Aviv. "The dream has been achieved, and it's wonderful that they don't know what it's like to be a minority, to be spit on and have to take it," says Boll, who still remembers seeing a sign on the door of an Elks social club in 1970s New Jersey reading, "No dogs, no blacks, no Jews." "Israelis don't really understand," says Boll. "It's a blessing, and a curse." 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