Why are some US Jews so offended by the Israeli ads aimed at expats?
UPDATE: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered that the ad campaign be canceled.
Why are some American Jews so exercised about the two-month old video ad campaign by the Israeli government aimed at tugging at the heartstrings of Israeli expats to get them to return home?
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg writes, "I don't think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads." (He was tipped off to the two-month-old campaign by a http://newsdesk.tjctv.com/2011/11/week-in-review-november-18-2011/">report on The Jewish Channel.)
The ad in question shows the young daughter of Israeli expats sitting with her parents while video chatting with her grandparents in Israel, who have a lighted menorah in the background. When the grandparents ask the girl what holiday it is, she says, “Christmas!” The tagline: “They will always be Israeli. Their kids won’t.”
Does this ad necessarily suggest that if an Israeli lives in America his kid won't know what Chanukah is? I didn't think so, but I guess it can be viewed that way. I saw it as a reminder to Israeli expats of how, unlike in Israel, Judaism is not the dominant culture in America. (UPDATE: Late Friday morning EST, the Israeli government removed this video from YouTube.)
As for the other ads, I don't see how they are offensive at all. Goldberg slams the one depicting an American man failing to understand the significance to his Israeli expat girlfriend of Israel's Memorial Day for fallen soldiers. But anyone who grew up in Israel or served in the Israeli army and now lives in America knows that even the most engaged, active American Jews fail to grasp the emotional weight of Israel's Memorial Day. Most don't mark it at all. As an IDF veteran, Goldberg surely knows that the emotion Israelis feel on this most solemn of Israeli days (yes, it beats Yom Kippur/biking day) cannot simply be explained. It can only be felt. That makes this a particularly effective ad to Israelis.
Chemi Shalev of Haaretz offers a succinct analysis of why these ads have touched a raw nerve in America, and why the reaction to them in Israel is so tone deaf:
As for the commercials themselves, and the surprisingly vehement reaction to them, I am of two minds. On the one hand, the Americans who are objecting, including the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, do “protest too much,” as Gertrude says in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, possibly because some of the situations portrayed in the commercials hit too close to home; possibly because the protestors fail to acknowledge or comprehend that Israelis who have immigrated abroad may indeed be prone to faster assimilation than American-born Jews; and just possibly because this is a good opportunity as any to vent some pent up anger at the current Israeli government without being automatically accused of “aiding Hamas and Hezbollah” or some such chauvinistic drivel.
On the other hand, one cannot ignore the insularity and self-centeredness that makes a growing number of Israeli politicians, government officials and opinion makers obtuse or oblivious to the effects of their actions on world public opinion, in general, and American Jews, in particular. Despite being forewarned, for example, so many members of the Knesset either couldn’t comprehend or couldn’t care less that the recent wave of anti-democratic legislation introduced to the Israeli parliament might alienate large swathes of liberal-minded American Jews.
Watch the ads and decide for yourself:
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American Jewry is insulted and feels that this ad campaign makes U.S. Jewry feel inadequate or second class. Yet, ironically, this is the same U.S. Jewry that has declared itself a failure — and Israel a success. I say this, because when the 1991 NJPS declared that 55% of U.S. Jewry is assimilated and intermarried, the desperate response was to create Birthright, and send every last Jewish youngster to Israel for free, to help boost their Jewish identity. If U.S. Jewry is so compelling, then why didn’t the Jewish leaders create “Birthright USA,” sending all U.S. Jewish kids to Jewish summer camps and day schools for free? Why Birthright Israel? Doesn’t that say something? Hard pill to swallow for U.S. Jewish leaders, but Jewish life is much more compelling in Israel than in the U.S. Otherwise, start organizing “Birthright New York” trips.
The reason why many US Jews (not to mention Israelis in the US) were so offended was because...they were so insulting.
The whole ad campaign was an anachronistic yet shrill shlilut hagolah exercise, ironic since many academics and politicians in Israel are currently reassessing this entire enterprise. The Yom HaZikaron ad was a perfect example of the outdated...in micro form it is saying the relationship cannot exist outside of Israel. In macro form it is saying the “Jewish” component of the US-Israel relationship can only reside in Israel....highly insulting and tone deaf.
From The Christian Science Monitor on the subject :
jay_birdy 7 comments:
It is really sad that the element in America that is trying to extinguish Christianity are the same people who arrived on these shores following WWII and found the land of opportunity, which by the way, was built by Christians and are now doing everything to secularize every aspect of America’s traditions. And how they would whine about people saying “Merry Christmas” while accumulating their wealth during the Christmas buying season, OH, excuse me . . . I should have said holiday season.
In America, the Jews are “an element.” In Israel we are the main ingredient… need we say more about the Jewish experience in the golden medina?
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Paul Avruch
12/02/11 01:18 PM
Aren’t we overlooking the most obvious answer? Unaffiliated American Jews are already much more assimilated than their unaffiliated Israeli brothers and sisters. I’ve visited secular Israeli public schools in early March where Purim songs play over the PA, where the kids may not know the story line of the Megilla or the names of all the major characters, but they know it’s Purim, they know of Queen Esther and they know about costumes and mishloach manot. Can we say the same for the average non-affiliated American Jew?
Indeed, one of the key reasons that there is more risk of Israeli assimilation is that in Israel they are insulated by being surrounded by Jewish images and icons while there is almost no presence of Christian ones.
The net result is that non-affiliated Israelis have greater familiarity with Jewish culture than non-affiliated Americans, and non-affiliated Americans have more familiarity with Christian culture than non-affiliated Israelis. And it is that uniquely Israeli Jewish sense of self that these ads are beckoning to.
Are the Americans really insulted by perceived Israeli haughtiness, or are they embarrassed by this uncomfortable reality of the inherent Israeli Jewish identity that they don’t have?