Diaspora and Israel: A Get is the only way forward
A majority of Michigan Jews voted for Abdul El-Sayed in the Senate race. Some polls suggest that number is larger than sixty percent, while others believe it just hovers above fifty. The exact percentage we may never know, and it does not really matter. When at least a third of New York City Jews voted for Zohran Mamdani, many observers suggested it was a local New York City political fluke, a city in crisis looking for change and the Jews wanting to be part of it. It was a very naive explanation even back then, but the proponents of that opinion could be excused for an abundance of hope.
The Michigan results showed beyond reasonable doubt that Jews voting for Mr. Mamdani, an unabashed antisemite, was not a tragic miscalculation. In both cases, the voters made a deliberate and calculated decision. Those decisions have finally confirmed the fatal split among Jews, a split many have known or suspected for a very long time. The Jewish votes in New York City and, even more so, in Michigan delivered the needed signatures of the witnesses under the get, the official divorce between the American Jewish Diaspora and Israel.
The divorce did not come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of a decades-long decay in the relationship between American Jews and Israel. It went through multiple stages, as every complicated relationship does: a marriage of love, a marriage of convenience, and finally our current moment – a situation where both sides don’t understand each other at all and want to move on with their separate lives. It progressed exactly as Ernest Hemingway described the process of going bankrupt in The Sun Also Rises: “Gradually, then suddenly.”
There are many studies and articles written about the causes of the decline of American Jewry. Yet there is only one reason that matters: there has been very little Jewish substance in American Jewish life. While a small percentage of Jews actively participated in communal life, Zionist efforts, and Israel-related activities, the vast majority did virtually nothing Jewish. They did not attend a synagogue, never visited Israel, and never contributed to Jewish causes. Though, to be fair, they did celebrate Interfaith Passover. Yet they called themselves Jewish, and that was enough to make everyone happy.
Preceding decades were truly unique in Jewish history. Being Jewish carried no social or political costs or stigma, only benefits. It seemed like everyone wanted to be Jewish and anyone could call themselves Jewish. It became an act of pure self-identification with zero commitment. The era was indeed magical, with no known precedents before and unlikely to repeat itself in the future.
Ossified official Jewish organizations kept pretending to represent American Jews, and American politics still acted as if there were a unified Jewish vote focused on Jewish concerns. But the cracks in this aging facade started to show through the old paint. One survey after another showed Israel relegated to the bottom of American Jewish concerns. Yet without a real crisis, the game of politics continued as usual. And then on October 7, the crisis arrived, in the writer’s famous words, “suddenly.”
Is there a way to reconcile under one roof those who believe Israel is the core of what being Jewish means and those who believe that electing Abdul El-Sayed and his likes is the best way to safeguard the future of Jews in America? There is no reasonable way for these two approaches to coexist, and Jews must admit that a split is the only path forward. Those who believe Abdul El-Sayed is their protector may continue to call themselves Jewish – there is nothing anyone can do about that. If one can be gender-fluid, then one may easily claim to be Jewish-fluid as well. But separation is extremely important for true Jewish survival.
Israel should stop crafting its policy by taking the interests of American Jews into account. The majority of American Jews have interests very different from Israel’s, aligning instead with the political ambitions of antisemites like Abdul El-Sayed. Recognizing this new reality is paramount for Israel’s future. Yes, there will continue to be an American Jewish community of “Jewish” Jews, but that community will be much smaller and carry fast-diminishing political influence. The Democratic Party is “lost,” and so appears the Republican Party if JD Vance and his ideological chief, Tucker Carlson, represent the face of its future. The split will cause the vast majority of American Jews to fully and completely divest from everything Jewish – a desire they neither hide nor lament. The rest of us will be fine.
The idea may sound shocking, but it is strategic and not without precedent. Prior to and during the expulsion from Spain, hundreds of thousands of Jews chose to remain and convert. The Midrash even claims that only one-fifth of all Jews in Egypt followed Moses out of exile. The Zionist movement in its early years was a tiny minority among all Jews. In Jewish history, when critical moments arrive, and today is definitely one of them, real survival takes precedence over imaginary unity with its platitudes detached from reality. It is time to sign and seal the get.
