The Jewish Internet has been abuzz this past week with reactions to an article that appeared in The Economist which suggests that, worldwide, Jews have decreasing interest in Israel and that in the United States and elsewhere, a Jewish culture detached from Israel is thriving ("Second thoughts about the Promised Land," Jan. 11, 2007). In some quarters, the article provoked cheering while in others it provoked serious concern. Actually, there is nothing new in the article. At least since Simon Dubnow, from the descriptive to the propositive, all had been said already. The really interesting question is the timing. Why now? And who stands behind it? Whose purposes is The Economist serving? It cannot be mere chance that this attack comes on the heels of the recent Lebanon war and in the context of the miserable current status of Israel's politics and government.

The fact is that Israel has rarely been the focal concern of Jews in the diaspora, especially America's Jews. At least since June 1967, they have been supportive of Israel's right to exist, for sure; but so has much of the American public. Acknowledging Israel's right to exist is not necessarily an indication of Jewish identity and/or identification. All survey data indicate that, at most, Israel becomes a focal point for America's Jews when it is severely threatened. However, once the immediate threat passes, the levels of concern, involvement and interest decline to what they had previously been and even continue to decline. Contrary to popular mythology, the Six-Day War of June 1967 did not result in a permanent transformation of the nature of the relationship between America's Jews and Israel. Once the pre-war anxiety and post-war euphoria subsided, the relationship returned to its "normal" pattern, i.e., the share of financial contributions allocated to Israel declined, tourism leveled off and American aliyah which, at its highest was never more than one-tenth of 1 percent of the American Jewish population, continued to experience ups and downs. So, the current low level of real interest in Israel among America's Jews is not all that surprising, especially given the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon this past summer and the allegations of widespread corruption in the Israeli government.

Nor is there much substance to the reports of significant increases of Jewish cultural identity among those who are totally unconcerned with Israel. Smoke and mirrors aside, all of the empirical evidence available demonstrates a clear correlation between Jewish identity and connections to Israel. Moreover, one need not fully agree substantively with A. B. Yehoshua to recognize that, in terms of real, transmittable Jewish culture, Israel is by far the center, with the United States, in second place, being the only other significant arena of Jewish cultural production.

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But the relationship between American Jewry and Israel is hardly analogous to that of Babylonia and Jerusalem. There, Babylonia was the center and its Talmud dominated for centuries. Today, in terms of Talmud or virtually any other type of Jewish cultural productivity, Israel dominates. As for other Jewish communities, Yiddish classes here and there in Eastern Europe are very nice but they hardly portend a meaningful Jewish future in those localities.

With all that, there is no denying that worldwide Jewish interest in Israel is on the decline, and this poses a significant challenge to Israel as well as to all those concerned with the well-being of the Jewish people. Berating diaspora Jewry is of no avail. If anything, it may exacerbate the situation. Traditional Israeli approaches to the diaspora have obviously not succeeded. Israel needs to adopt radically new approaches and strategies. As a start, two conditions need to be met.

Despite the ideology of "ingathering of exiles," the probabilities of mass immigration to Israel, or aliyah, are negligible to nil. Diaspora Jewry, today, is overwhelmingly located in Western countries where they are not persecuted and they have achieved relatively secure socio-economic and political status. There is more than ample empirical evidence that, for all age groups, spending time in Israel intensifies ties with the country. Therefore, rather than focusing on traditional notions of aliyah, the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization should develop and encourage opportunities for partial or "time-share aliyah," in which individuals and families will spend part of the year and/or part of their lives in Israel. Such dual- national arrangement can take a variety of forms, and it will take creative minds and energies to develop them. It is time to begin this effort in earnest.

Perhaps even before that, however, some major internal changes need to be implemented if there is to be any hope of attracting diaspora Jewry to spend any time in Israel. Israel needs to undertake every effort to make itself attractive, to make world Jewry see it as Jewishly desirable. First and foremost, that requires dramatic efforts to root out the image of massive political corruption that plagues the country. Under the current state of affairs, is it any question why Israel is not attractive?

The writers are senior fellows of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. Prof. Waxman is professor emeritus of sociology and Jewish studies, Rutgers University. Prof. DellaPergola holds the Shlomo Argov chair on Israel-Diaspora relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.