Daniel Gordis on the Rift Between American and Israeli Jews (Rebroadcast)
The Tikvah Podcast
Tikvah
4.6 • 620 Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2021
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's sometimes asserted, particularly in elite circles, that liberal American Jews have grown distant from Israel because of Israel’s actions, including those undertaken by longtime and now former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. With the ascension this year of a new prime minister and a new government in Israel, the time has come to reassess that argument and consider it anew.
The American-Israeli writer Daniel Gordis disagrees with this idea, that Israel's actions determined American Jewish attitudes. To him, the growing divide between Israeli and American Jews is decidedly not about what Israel does. It is, rather, about what Israel is. The two largest Jewish communities in the world are animated by different attitudes about Jewish life and Jewish prosperity. In this rebroadcast conversation from 2019 between Gordis and Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver, he argues that these more fundamental differences, not the policies of the Netanyahu government or the chief rabbinate, are the true cause of the widening rift between the Jews of Israel and the United States. That suggests that a simple change in a policy—as the new government may bring about—won’t bridge the gap.
Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Americans who follow Israel, Israeli politics, and its treatment in the prestige media and |
| 0:05.0 | international organizations have, for quite a few years now, often said that the sometimes |
| 0:11.3 | rocky patches in the U.S.-Israel relationship have to do with the fact that liberal American |
| 0:16.8 | Jews, that is, the great majority of Jews in the United States, don't like Israel's |
| 0:22.2 | long-time former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. |
| 0:26.2 | Now that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been succeeded by a coalition government led by Prime |
| 0:31.0 | Minister Naftali Bennett, I thought it would be interesting to revisit a conversation that |
| 0:35.7 | I had with Daniel Gordas back in April 2019. |
| 0:39.8 | That conversation focused on the growing rift between American Jewry and Israel and Daniel's |
| 0:45.6 | contention, that against the conventional wisdom, it's not what Israel does, but what Israel |
| 0:52.3 | is that makes it so discomforting for American Jewry, that |
| 0:56.0 | that contention is ripe for our reconsideration. |
| 0:59.0 | Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. You'll hear me introduced |
| 1:04.0 | my 2019 conversation with Daniel in greater detail in just a moment. But if you enjoy this conversation, |
| 1:10.0 | you can subscribe to the |
| 1:11.4 | Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify. I hope you'll leave us a |
| 1:17.2 | five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas. I welcome your feedback on this or any |
| 1:22.7 | of our other podcast episodes at podcast at tikicfa fund.org. |
| 1:27.7 | And of course, if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website, |
| 1:32.5 | tikfafund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. |
| 1:36.6 | Here now is a rebroadcast of my 2019 discussion with Daniel Gordes. |
| 1:49.8 | Thank you. with Daniel Gordas. The occupation, the women of the wall, the nation-state law, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tikvah, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Tikvah and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.