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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/opinion/jewish-america-identity.html
Israel and Jewish Identity in America
(New York Times) Nicholas Lemann - The idea that a psychological divorce from Israel is possible seems fanciful. Almost half of all Jews live there; many of us have Israeli friends and relatives. Many American Jews grew up in a world of Jewish day schools, Jewish summer camps, gap years studying in Israel between high school and college, and little blue tin boxes in which a few coins for Israel would be deposited just before the Sabbath. Thriving synagogues where Israel isn't mentioned, where the Israeli flag isn't displayed, where the congregation doesn't say a weekly prayer for the Jewish state, are rare, even in the Reform movement. This lived experience makes it clear why a Washington Post poll last year showed that 3/4 of American Jews agree that Israel is "vital for the long-term future of the Jewish people." Zionism's success in establishing a Jewish state wasn't inevitable - nothing is - but it's easier to understand in the context not only of the mass murder of Jews in Europe and, after the Second World War and into the 1970s, our expulsion from most of the Middle East and North Africa, but also of Jewish tradition. The main story line of the Hebrew Bible is of an exiled people's search for a homeland. Long before Herzl, Jews prayed facing Jerusalem, and at least notionally have longed for the rebuilding of the Temple there. Zionism touched a deep collective yearning for self-determination, for self-protection, for freedom from perpetual outsider status. All this makes the idea that Israel and Zionism can easily be factored out of American Jewish life seem almost fantastical. It asks us to give up a portion of our souls. The writer is former dean of the Columbia Journalism School.