Following President Trump’s recent decertification of the Iran deal, the agreement’s future is back on the Jewish community’s radar. This evokes complicated feelings in me and many of my fellow millennials. As a pro-Israel, pro-diplomacy millennial, I felt deeply alienated by the way Jewish institutions handled the issue in the Bay Area and across the country in 2015.
A recent experience at a JCC provided a perfect illustration of the problem — and a glimmer of hope for a solution.
A few weeks ago, I participated in the annual Zionism 3.0 conference at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto. I spoke on a panel about how millennials view and participate in the American Jewish conversation about Israel and Zionism. I planned to focus my remarks on how millennials are not joining establishment or legacy organizations in the same way our parents’ generation did. These spaces are less welcoming for pro-Israel, anti-occupation Jews like myself. Helpfully, OFJCC CEO Zack Bodner provided a useful illustration of this during his opening remarks at the conference.
Recounting the debate over the Iran nuclear agreement in the summer of 2015, Bodner stated that he had only invited to the JCC speakers who opposed to the deal. That is, until it was brought to his attention that some in the community actually supported the agreement.
Despite the fact that Bodner eventually opened up the conversation on the JCC campus, his initial approach to the issue embodied the problematic reaction most American Jewish organizations had toward the Iran deal. Most Jewish establishment organizations vocally opposed the agreement, despite the fact that American Jewish support for the Iran deal was 20 percentage points higher than among the population as a whole. For those in my demographic — Jewish millennials — the numbers are even more dramatic.
According to a J Street poll from the summer of 2015, 66 percent of Jewish 18-29 year olds supported the Iran Deal. These figures track closely with a survey released during the initial debate over the Iran Deal by the libertarian Cato Institute. The survey shows that millennials favored the Iran deal at the time by 10 percentage points over the population as a whole and hold strong pro-diplomacy views on US foreign policy across the board.
It’s no secret that many American Jewish institutions are driving away young American Jews with their hawkish positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the Cato poll suggests that our views on this issue are symptomatic of a broader, pro-diplomacy worldview. American Jews already tend to favor a two-state solution and diplomacy-first foreign policy, which is magnified among Jewish millennials. The Jewish establishment’s tendency to embrace more hawkish politics is going to get more controversial, not less, as my generation continues to come of age.
Millennials in general, and Jewish millennials in particular, are far more likely to support the Iran deal and a two-state solution. They are also more likely to oppose worrisome trends like Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and American military overreach in the Middle East and beyond.
If Jewish institutions don’t fundamentally rethink how they engage with millennials — in foreign policy and in other areas — we will be less inclined to affiliate with the organized American Jewish community.
To be sure, this isn’t just about reaching out to millennials and American Jews for their own sake. American Jews support the Iran deal and diplomacy first-foreign policy because it’s good for Israel and good for the United States. They support a two-state solution because it’s the only way to ensure Israel’s future as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people. Jewish organizations should echo these stances because they are good policy and they will be able to better engage vast swaths of the community.
Thankfully, despite what happened in 2015, there are some early signs that progress is being made. This time around, I am heartened by the response of many organizations in our community.
The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, have voiced serious concerns about decertification. These responses far better reflect both reality and the views of my generation as well as American Jews more broadly. I hope they’ll be echoed at the Palo Alto JCC and other institutions in the Bay Area.
It is encouraging to see these institutions side with facts over rhetoric. If the organizations that claim to speak for us start doing a better job at representing our values, I believe my fellow millennials will want to participate in these organizations with the same enthusiasm, passion and commitment as our parents and grandparents.
Great. A poll found that the Iran deal is supported by young Jews. First, I read that according to polls, the intermarriage rate among young Jews is higher overall then in older cohorts. Then even more recently, I read that a large percentage of millennial jews believe that the X-tian idol is the messiah. Now this. What’s next?
The 3rd Reich in all of it’s glory.
Jewish millennials are not joining establishment organizations in the same way their parents’ generation did, but not for the reason the author claims. Rather, they are not joining because they are fleeing Reform Judaism in record numbers. Amazingly, the Reform movement has a 70% intermarriage rate.
With regards to the merits of this sophomoric article, the two-state solution was a perverse euphasim for carving an Islamic terror state out of the land of Israel and the living flesh of her people.
Like the Holy Roman Empire, the two-state solution did not solve anything and it wasn’t in the business of creating two states. The “solution” solved nothing except the shortage of graves in Israel and Muslim terrorists in the Middle East.
Gen-x lefty american Jews disaffiliated and intermarried at record pace. What does that produce? Millineals who are more disaffiliated and intermarried and assimilated.
It’s not a crisis. It’s just what everybody knew would happen.
And it’s not new. In every land where Jews gave landed and found a period of peace and prosperity Jews willing to assimilate have joined in to the world around them and decided to try and reconcile judiasm to the goyish world. That’s where the reform movement cane from. Jews that wanted to repackage judiasm into something more acceptable to the mcgoyersons. Spoiler alert didn’t help em one bit when Jew killing time hit during the shoah. Won’t help em the next time either.
It’s sad but it’s inevitable.
There’s a core of orthodox Jews in the states and around the world that are staying Jewish. Theres israel.where even the secular Jews are jewish. That is enough to continue our people as the assimilationist….well asssimilate.
Judiasm and the Jewish people survived the Babylonians and Assyrians and the Romans and the byzantines and the Greeks and the spanish and the Nazis and the soviets. We’re surviving the Arabs today.
You actually think we should redefine who we are and a four thousand year old tradition because we’re are scared of a bunch of spoiled children who simply aren’t interested any more?
This isn’t marketing coke or Pepsi or some internet networking site. It’s the oldest continuing culture on the face of the planet.
Get a little perspective. Get over yourselves.
Fuck Jews. What is the point of this stupid identity when 50 percent of you can just fit in as white? This stupid identity politics has caused so much problems in society, I don’t see why jews just abandon this social identity and just identify with their nationality.
That’s an interesting question elegantly expressed. Your mom must be proud of you.
See the thing is there’s a difference between skin color and nationality and culture. While the truly ignorant give huge importance to skin color in determining who people are (probably cause they learn their colors in elementary school and then can’t understand the big words people use after that) culture is about how people live. Values, customs history. And of course in many cases religion. To give up that sense of self us to lose yourself in history and become nothing.
That loss of self and place in the world and feeling of general nothingness and worthlessness is why racists spend so much time hating and pointing fingers at people. They themselves are nothing with no culture or history and the only thing that makes them feel like something is to belittle others.
Probably explains why many americans spend so much energy identifying with sports teams. They have nothing else that defines them, makes them feel special or makes them feel like they belong anywhere. Probably some harkening back to some subconscious need for tribalism.
While I’m Caucasian I’d be incredibly sad if I had nothing else by which to define myself.
Jews that hold onto the culture of their fathers know who they are and where their place in the universe is and having that solved spend less time hating and angry and more time getting on with the business of life.
As for identifying with nationality…Jews have tried that wherever we’ve landed. And a huge portion of jewelry try and assimilate. But as history shows before that process is complete every place we land our neighbors explain to us quite violently that we were never welcome in the first place. Even trying to fit in and abandoning our culture us treated as if we are watching some kind of plot. So while Jews try to be and frankly are good Americans just like we were good Germans and poles, our neighbors don’t and never have seen it that way.
Besides again if all I had to define myself by was the location where I lived…I’d find that sad too.
That’s a big part of why i think we’ve stayed strongly self identified as Jews at our core.
Bring back Hitler and the glorious 3rd Reich. The Final Solution was one of the great achievments of recent times.
A failed “masterpiece”. The “Final Solution” was neither solution nor final. Sad for you, hah? The third reich went out in a pffff… The Glorious state of Israel is a thorn in your side, hah? What a shmuck