Jewish Identification after the Six-Day War

Author(s): Arthur Hertzberg

Source: Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jul., 1969), pp. 267-271
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4466526
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 JEWISHIDENTIFICATIONAFTER THE SIX-DAY WAR

BY ARTHURHERTZBERG

Everybodyknows that there was an extraordinarytide of concern for Israel

among AmericanJews during the criticalperiod of the Six-Day War. The opin-
ion polls taken duringthose days leave no doubt about the overwhelmingnature
of their emotionalinvolvementin the supportof Israel. Money was given in un-
precedentedamounts.On these areas we do have some facts. What we do not
have is any adequateinformationabout the responseof youngerpeople. Some em-
piricaldata does exist but unfortunatelyit has as yet not been studied. I should
like to begin with whatwe know aboutthe youngerelementbecause it is no doubt
the most interesting,and least obvious element in the whole of the story.
In the days immediatelybefore the Six-Day War, somethinglike 8,000 vol-
unteerswere processedat the offices of the JewishAgency in New York and at
variousotherplacesthroughoutthe United States.At least in New York, the young
men and women who appearedfilled out a form which included a section with
questions about their previous Jewish education and affiliations.Obviously,the
young people who turnedup to volunteerwere not a randomsample of their en-
tire generationof the AmericanJewish young. It is self-evident that those who
were eager to go were more highly motivated than their peers. The questionis:
What motivatedthem?Is there anythingin their prior backgroundswhichexplains
theirvolunteering?Does this shed any light on the mode in which a sense of Jew-
ish affiliationhad been engenderedat least amongthis very specialgroup?
No one has as yet studied these questionnairesthoroughly,and what I have
to reportthereforerepresentsan impressionwhichresultsfrom dippinginto them.
Here is what I found. On the questionof their priorJewish affiliations,well over
half of the volunteershad no present affiliationwith Jewish organizationsof any
kind. In college they did not belong to Hillel, to any of the Zionist organizations,
or to any of the college youthgroupsof the religiousbodies. In this respectthe vol-
unteers seem quite typical of the patternof their generationas a whole, which
is, in its majority,not formallyaffiliatedduringthe college years with any Jewish
structure.In this connection,however, one fact must be added: the small handful
of volunteerswho did manageto reach Israelduringthe last days in May, before
the United States Governmentimposed a travelban, representedprimarilyyoung
people of the Orthodoxand of the left-wing Zionist youth organizations.These
most committedelements startedearlierthan anyone else.
On the questionof earlierJewish educationthe results seem, on the surface,
to be radicallydifferent.The overwhelmingmajorityhad had, by contemporary
AmericanJewishnorms,some fairlysubstantialpreliminaryJewisheducation.With
negligible exceptions, every one of them has either Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitz-
267

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268 JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES

vah or confirmed.One would be tempted to argue that this indicatesthat some

positive Jewish momentumis created by our present structureof Jewish educa-
tion, but such an interpretationis not necessarilytrue. One possible explanation
is that the significantfactor is not the Jewish educationthat these young people
receive,but the homes from whichthey come. In the study on apostasyby Ritter-
band and Kaplowitz, which is soon to be publishedand some results of which
have been sketchedout at this conference,it is suggestedthat home background
rather than formal educationis the importantvariablewhen it comes to the de-
cision to affiliateor disaffiliatewith Jewish life. This suggestionis consonantwith
the resultof recent studiesby Greeleyand Rossi on the effectof Catholicparochial
educationon the Catholic commitmentsof those who attend such schools. They
found little significantdifferencein Catholiccommitmentbetweenthe productsof
public and parochialschool educations;what made a criticaldifferencewas the na-
ture of Catholic faith and practice in the homes in which these people grew to
maturity.
The fact that the vast majorityof volunteersgot some kind of Jewish edu-
cation is probablynot, as such, significant.We know as a matter of fact that in
all of the major Jewish communitiesoutside of New York City somethinglike
every eight or nine out of ten Jewish childrenare nowadaysreceivingsome for-
mal Jewishtraining.That was indicatedby the study of the Jews of GreaterWash-
ingtonseveralyears ago and theseresultshave been confirmedby more recent in-
vestigationsinto other Jewish communitiesin midde-sizedand smallertowns. It
is, of course, significantthat those who volunteeredin New York representedthe
same profile,for it is well known that the situationof Jewisheducationin the City
itself is far less positive.Certainlyno more than half of the Jewish childrengrow-
ing up in the five boroughsreceive any kind of formalJewish education.It might
thereforebe arguedthat the volunteerscame from among those who did receive
such trainingand are thereforeproof of its effects. This argumentis nonetheless
inconclusive.In the first place, many of the volunteers(againwe still lack precise
figures)registeredin New York but came from suburbia.More important,the
very fact that those from New York did receive formalJewish educationin child-
hood is indicativeof the Jewishcommitmentof their families,more intense than
that of their peers, and educationmight thereforebe quite secondaryto the ef-
fect of that commitmentas a whole. What does appearis that these young people
who volunteered,at presentlargely inactive as Jews, had within them some kind
of Jewish involvement,dormantbut powerful,which came out in a moment of
crisis and moved them to radical action.
To consider, now, the adult generation,the striking,tangible fact was that
not only the amountsgiven to Israel duringthe Six-Day War but the numberof
givers more than doubled.Here too, we do not yet have a set of accuratefigures
for the entire country,but my personal experienceis confirmedby what I have
been told by quite a numberof my friends and colleagueswho were involved all
over the countryin the variouseffortsin supportof Israel. Whatthese impressions
amountto will not, I am fairly confident,be altered radicallyby the precise fig-
ures when they become available.In "normaltimes" the United Jewish Appeal
receives a contributionevery year from somethingless than half of the heads of

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Patternsof JewishAffiliationand Non-Affiliation 269
householdsin the AmericanJewish community.The emergencysituation of the
Six-Day War roughlydoubled the numberof givers to the order of eight out of
ten. It is clear that all those people whose Jewish commitmentsexisted, even
thoughthey had not expressedthemselvesbefore in a continuingand active way,
were moved to do somethingin a moment of crisis.
I would like to add a not entirelyparentheticalreflectionas a suggestionfor
future investigation.Whatwe know about synagogueattendance,which is a very
low and even synagoguebelonging, which apparentlyrepresentsin many cases
a "temporarymembership"while the childrenare growingup, has been at var-
iance with the extraordinarily high rate of a certainconventionalkind of Jewish
educationthat almost all of the young outside New York City are now receiving.
Is it possible that the kind of people who "face the crisis" of at least letting the
childrenknow that they are Jews by sendingthem to a Jewish school for a while,
while remainingpersonallyinactive, are also the same people who do not regu-
larly give to the United JewishAppeal but were "Jewish"enough duringthe Six-
Day War to respond?The parallelismin the figuresfor Jewish education today
and for giving to the United Jewish Appeal in May and June of 1967 is almost
exact, and it is probable,I think, that this is not a coincidence.
What about the one-tenthor more of the AmericanJews who did not re-
spond at all then, or respondedwith active negation?These existed at both ends
of the political spectrum.There were the traditionalanti-Zionistswho centered
on the AmericanCouncil for Judaismand there were the younger people of the
New Left. In both of these quite disparatecircles the Six-Day War provoked a
crisis of conscience, and in each circle there was a split. Perhapsthe majorityof
the best-knownfiguresamong the lay leadershipof the Council for Judaismaban-
doned their oppositionto Israel and gave substantiallyin supportof Israel.Among
the young of the New Left, there were individualswho turned up to volunteer.
More strikingly,soon after the Six-Day War, a New Left Conference took
place in Chicagoduringthe summerof 1967. It was dominatedpoliticallyby an
alliance of black militantsand some ideologicalopponents of Israel, in the name
of Third World solidarity.The rhetoric of the resolution in which Israel and
Zionismwere attackedwas of the most inflammatorykind, and a numberof Jews
among the organizersof that Conferencewalked out in disgust.Nonetheless,and
again despite the absence of exact information,I have the impressionthat the
splits in these two circleswere not quite parallelphenomena.The traditionalupper-
class, old German-Jewishfamilyanti-Zionismseems to have been well-nighobliter-
ated. Whatremainsof that circle is now very small indeed, for most of its major
suppliersof money and influenceare gone, and there has been no new rallyingby
them to an anti-Israelposition.In the circlesof the New Left, anti-Israelsentiment
has reboundedand it is increasinglymore important.One has the sense that the
class situationis a less importantfactor here than the generation.Those who were
deeply involvedin their Jewish identityin 1967, even in a negativesense, among
the middle-agedgeneration,were shakenmorepermanentlyby the Six-DayWarthan
was the younger generationfor whom world-widerevolutionaryissues tended to
remainthe paramountconcern.Some of the young were shakenfor a moment, a

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270 JEWISH SOCIALSTUDIES

few were shakenout, but the majorityof the New Left had alreadyessentiallycom-
mittedwhatRitterbandand Kaplowitzwould call secularapostasy.
What, then, were the motivatingfactors behind the Jewish response?There
has been generalagreementby now among all those who have discussedthis ques-
tion-and I myself said as much in an article in Commentary which was writ-
ten in the very midst of the events-that the memoryof Auschwitzand the sense
of shame at the passivitywhich let this happen was the most critical factor. This
was certainlythe triggermechanismfor the Jewish responsebut I thinkthat what
it detonatedvariedwith the conceptionsof its identitythat variousparts of Ameri-
can Jewry held on the eve of these events. EverybodymentionedAuschwitz,but
for differentpurposes.Some of the young radicalsused its memory to insist that
the United States was committinggenocide in Vietnam and the Israeliswere part
of world-wideoppressionand counter-revolution. For the overwhelming majorityof
AmericanJews their memoryof Auschwitzplayed itself out, of course, within a
differentcontext of personalemotion and self-identity.But what is the basic iden-
tity of the bulk of the community-the center between the extremes of self-ghet-
toized ultra-orthodoxyand the other extremeof the young Jewish revolutionaries,
realor make-believe?
Many millions of words have been spent in the last several decades on the
question of what is the primaryidentity of AmericanJews. Even the most Zion-
ist among them have felt it necessary to insist that they are uncomplicatedly
"American"and that theirJewishnessis a secondarycategory.The responseto the
Six-Day War is unintelligiblein these terms. This outpouringbroke throughthe
crusts of all the respectablerationalizationswhich people had used on themselves
and on others in the past. Here is Israel standingseeminglyalone, as Jews had
stood alone in the days of Bevin and of Hitler and of all the pogromsand perse-
cutions throughoutthe ages. Suddenlya brutesense was reevokedthat the ultimate
line between "us" and "them"was the line between Jews and everybodyelse. It
does not matterwhetherthis was an accuratedescriptionof the facts even of the
situationof Israel in the springof 1967 or of the events of the Jewishpast. This
was the way it was felt in the mass emotionof AmericanJews. It was helpfulthat
at that momentAmericanopinionwas overwhelminglywith Israel, but the seeming
inactivityof the governmentwas the more importantphenomenon,emotionally.
Those Jews who still had even a dormantsense that their being Jewish was their
primaryidentity,even as a set of negativehang-ups,were those who were touched.
This Jewishidentityof the millionsin this countryis not essentiallyreligious,
certainlynot in the classic sense. A hundredyears ago the ancestorsof all the Jews
who gave to the United Jewish Appeal or of the young people who came rushing
to volunteer,would, if asked for a definition,have answeredsimply that they are
childrenof the Covenantthat God had made with Abraham.Their contemporary
descendantswould probablystammerout that they are part of a communitywhich
is not quite ethnic in the conventionalsense; which has a feeling of being heir to
a peculiar,often painful, and more often creativehistory;and that their sense of
involvementwith other Jews is that of an internationalextendedfamily. Most peo-
ple wouldaddthatreligionis somehowor othercrucialto this identity,but thereare

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Patternsof JewishAffiliationand Non-Affiliation 271
myriadversionsof whatthis means. I thinkthatunderneaththis seemingconfusion
there is a religiousfactor of the most profoundimportanceand that it is central
to all of the rest. It goes like this:We, the majorityof AmericanJews,believeon ra-
tionalistgroundsthat there is no chosen people;we believe that the Jews have no
superiorityof any kind inherentwithin them-and yet we insist that being Jewish
is somethingof the most profoundimportance,makingdemandson both the Jew-
ish individualand the whole communityto be somethingvery specialand centrally
creative;there may be a God and it is not respectableintellectuallyto affirmthe
belief in chosenness-and yet we behaveon the presumptionthat we are chosen
and that our disappearancewould be an unutterabletragedy.
In contemporarytermsthe existenceof the state of Israel,no matterwhatmay
be its own image of itself, is involved in these emotions and supportedby them
among the majorityof American Jews. It is regardedas vital for the continued
existenceof a Jewishpresencein the world. The very fact that it could be created
is in itselfa deep reassuranceto Jewsthatthere are energieswithinthis international
communityof theirs that defy reason.For Israel to have gone under would have
precipitateda perhapseven more severe crisis of faith and hope than was occa-
sioned by the destructionsof the First and SecondTemples.
We have by now plentyof quantitativeevidence on the measurablebehavior
patternsof AmericanJews. Even so, I do not think that we understandthe phe-
nomenonof this self-identityas well as we should.Perhapsthe time has come for
someoneotherthanjournaliststo do sufficientin-depthinterviewsso that we begin
to understand.Is it too much to hope that a correctunderstandingof the reasons
for the reactionsto the Six-DayWar will be of help both in predictingthe future
and in helpingus to fashionit?

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