Israelis across political and religious lines are worried about the weakening connection with younger Jewish Americans — who, according to a recent AP poll, tend to consider support for Israel less crucial to their Jewish identity than older adults.
“It’s extremely important to us,” said Itai Nixon, who leads the diaspora department for Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. “We’re the state of the Jewish people, not just Israelis.”
Lesley Sachs, who has protested the current Israeli government and chairs the Israel Movement for Progressive and Reform Judaism, also considers a close relationship with diaspora Jews a “strategic asset” for both Israel and Jews worldwide.
So she’s greatly concerned about diaspora Jews losing the sense that Israel can be a homeland for them, especially as rising antisemitism targets them regardless of political and religious affiliations.
“That was always really, really important that everybody around the world, especially after the Holocaust, knows that there is a country that will always take them,” Sachs said in her synagogue in Tel Aviv. “This is already a few generations after, and this is less prominent in their DNA. And I think that this is really a failure on the part of both Israel and world Jewry, that we have not managed to keep that prominent.”
