Israeli officials need crash course on Diaspora, asserts local AJC leader

The controversy surrounding the recent launching and dropping of an Israeli campaign to counter assimilation demonstrates a growing disconnect between Israeli and North American Jews, the acting Israel director of the American Jewish Committee asserted this week.

Ed Rettig, the AJC leader who is also a Reform rabbi and scholar of Diaspora affairs, said Israeli officials dealing with Jews in the U.S. must be systemically taught about the American Jewish community. He recently submitted a policy paper to Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the Jewish Agency, to close the gap (see adjacent article).

Rettig called the campaign launched by the Jewish Agency's long-term Israel program MASA "a neat example" this problem. "The people at MASA are honestly puzzled by the angry response to their campaign, and the people who were irked by the ad are honestly befuddled by the campaign," said Rettig, 55, who immigrated to Israel from the U.S. 37 years ago.

The campaign, which called on Israeli viewers to help stop "the loss" of Jews to assimilation, produced angry responses from prominent Jews in the U.S. and Israel before Sharansky announced Wednesday that it would be dropped.

"We regret to say the campaign crudely sets back the effort to build up a dialogue between the State of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora on principles like respect, openness and partnership," wrote Rabbi Gilad Kariv, chairman of the Israeli arm of the Reform Movement and Paula Edelstein, chief of the aliyah department in the Jewish Agency, last week in a letter to Sharansky.

"This situation could have easily been averted by educating the Israeli officials who came up with the campaign about North American Jews and why they would find it offensive," said Rettig, who completed his doctoral thesis on Israel-Diaspora relations last month.

The message of the controversial MASA campaign, Rettig says, "runs contrary to the notion of identity by choice, which is central to the way American Jews define themselves - and which is foreign to many Israeli Jews."

The policy paper calls for Jewish Agency departments dealing specifically with American Jewish-Israeli relations "to be brought on board with training sessions promoting the need for a deep cultural dialogue." Americans must also be educated about Israeli perceptions of identity, the paper states. "Specifically, Israel programs for American youth must incorporate short classes about Israel that discuss not just history, but the shape and meaning of identity." It also advocates teaching Israel Defense Forces troops about the Diaspora and educating Israeli businessmen.

Yuli Edelstein, the minister in charge of Diaspora affairs, is currently putting together a team of advisers on U.S. Jewry, and last month asked Rettig to join the forum, where he would act to implement some of the policy paper's suggestions.

Rettig adds: "The program will allow these two communities to talk to each other rather than past each other, and to make each other's most basic identities and sensibilities comprehensible and even inspirational."