'The Israeli Century': Yossi Shain's view of Israel-Diaspora dynamics - review

Shain recognizes that the Diaspora is not the suspension of Jewish history (only the history of Jews as a majority in their ancestral homeland was suspended), but a parallel historical line to which the central focus shifted for 1,813 years (135-1948). He readily designates America “the most powerful and prosperous Diaspora community in Jewish history,” but accents that “Israel has displaced the United States as the center of global Jewry and as the long-term definer of the Jewish people’s interests and identity.”

While the Diaspora has not been negated, it has been superseded: “Today, over 70 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, there is no longer a real debate over which is the true Jewish homeland. Even the most patriotic American Jews, who would never think of uprooting themselves for a home overseas, understand that Israel is increasingly the dominant force in the Jewish world, and the only country that can claim to be a homeland of the Jews.”

And not merely a homeland, but a mouthpiece as well, because “despite the accomplishments of Jewish Diaspora organizations in support of world Jewry, today nobody can seriously compete with the State of Israel as the definitive spokesperson for the Jewish people.”

The author is fully aware that his thesis, and his strident emphasis thereof, may well ruffle feathers: “This is a difficult pill for many Diaspora Jews to swallow, especially in the United States, which for decades after the Holocaust enjoyed the status of being the epicenter of the Jewish world.”

Yet he avers that American Jewry facilitated Israel’s rise, and should hardly be surprised by Israel’s current dominance. “The nascent State of Israel developed into a critical component of American Jews’ identity, and supporting Zionism from afar became a substitute for nourishing ethnic and religious communal ties in the United States. Support for Israel allowed many American Jews to preserve their Jewishness without observing their Judaism, and Israel became a means for renewal and community mobilization. By donating to Israel, American Jews felt a sense of mission and partnership in the greatest Jewish adventure of our time.”

Perhaps from the moment the Jewish state was reborn in 1948, it was destined to supplant the Diaspora: “No matter how far back you go, whenever the Jews enjoyed national sovereignty, this always overshadowed Jewish life and created the fundamental context of Jewish self-definition everywhere.”

But just how did this subtle and historic transfer of focus and clout occur? Shain explains that “Israeli Jews are channeling the global traits and talents accumulated by generations of Jews in the absence of sovereignty into international success in a constantly growing number of fields. And this is happening at the same time that Diaspora communities face seemingly insurmountable forces of assimilation, along with rising antisemitism, especially in the United States. The contrast between Israel’s rise and the Diaspora’s decline is one of the central stories of the Israeli Century.”

Then there is the demographic aspect: “Israel will, over the course of the next decade or two, become home to an ever-growing majority of the world’s Jews.”

Shain’s hymning of the State of Israel, largely deserved, is nonetheless lacunose and reveals blind spots. Would that his rosy optimism reckoned candidly with the daily realities of everyday life in modern Israel. He elides several crucial counterexamples that would attenuate his premise, and thereby risks coming across to certain diasporists as oblivious to the obvious. While he asks and addresses several relevant questions, the following are not among them: almost 75 years after the rebirth of Israel, why is the Jewish Diaspora still as large as it is? Why haven’t all Orthodox Jews, at least, immigrated to Israel, for which they continue to pray daily but remotely, even though a Jewish state exists and eagerly awaits their arrival?

The most salient answers must spotlight the ongoing deficiencies in the State of Israel vis-a-vis religion, politics, and security. While Israel is a sovereign nation-state, it refrains from exercising its sovereignty regarding the heartland of the homeland, which remains in limbo more than half a century after its recovery during the pivotal events of 1967; while Israel possesses militarily might and is capable of defending itself, its counterterrorism efforts are largely responsive and piecemeal instead of proactive and decisive; and its wars of defense are waged with crippling handicaps instead of with finality, inevitably leading to recurrent rounds of battle.

Moreover, while the repatriates from the Babylonian captivity – who were not even sovereign but subjects of imperial Persia – rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem within 22 years (538-516 BCE) and renewed the rites and laws pertaining thereto, the Zionist enterprise was mostly secular, and far from rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, to this day Jews are restricted in visiting and praying upon Temple Mount, hardly a substantiation of modern Jewish sovereignty. Diaspora Jews, although impressed by the Start-Up Nation, would be more impressed by the Safe-and-Secure Nation, a polity free of the chronic stabbings, shootings, car rammings, lynch mobs, suicide bombers, arsonists, terror tunnels, and rocket fire to which Israelis by now may be inured, but which still shock, terrify, and deter Diaspora Jewry from claiming their right of return.

The author concedes, slightly, that “although Israel continues to battle hostile forces in the Middle East, and peace with the Palestinians remains a far-off prospect, the most glaring feature of the Israeli Century is the growing confidence in Israel’s power, stability, and vitality as it ingathers the Jewish people [to] the Land of Israel.”

Yet many Jews do not associate the State of Israel especially with stability, and Shain’s asseveration that “the Israeli Century is defined by its continuity and stability, not its precariousness,” is bound to strike many readers as rather at variance with the evidence.

Indeed, the marvel of modern Israel is its impressive resilience and endurance in spite of the prevalent precariousness, not as the result of an absence thereof. Overall, the peril of Shain’s perspective is that it may engender hubris or complacency, whereas a more provident outlook would acknowledge that the nation’s long-term survival is dependent upon its willingness to exercise sovereignty in its national interest.

Throughout the book, Shain frequently conflates “the Israelization of the Jewish people” (an unobjectionable notion) with “the Israelization of Judaism” (a notion plausible only with regards to non-traditional, modern denominations). He posits that “it is Jewish history itself, as entrenched in the minds of Jews and non-Jews alike for generations, and the perception of Jewish identity as something essentially Diasporic, that must be reexamined if we are to understand the meaning of the Israeli Century,” yet to Orthodox or otherwise knowledgeable Jews, Jewish identity has never been anchored in the lands of exile but rather rooted always in the Land of Promise, the Holy Land, the Land of Israel.

The Israeli Century, unafraid of evincing chutzpah, features grandiose declarations about the so-called end of history, or of transcending the paradigmatic cycle of exile and return that are either ahistorical or premature, such as: “The Israeli experience is fundamentally different from any other the Jews have known.”

The book is more grounded and sober in its inarguable claim that “Israel hoped to make Jews around the world feel that it is their national home. Most Diaspora Jews see it as such and identify with it – even if they criticize it. In this respect, they are compelled to engage with the Jewish state because it necessarily impinges on their own identity and condition as Jews.”

Despite its elisions and hyperbole, The Israeli Century is an extensive and substantive assessment of Jewry’s contemporary homeland-Diaspora dynamic, and worthy of the thoughtful consideration and critique of a broad and discerning readership.  ■