American Jews and the Construction of Israel's Jewish Identity

Bibliographic Data

ID3892005
AuthorsYossi Shain (Georgetown University, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume9
Issue2
Pages163-201
Publication date2000-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiaspora A Journal of Transnational Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1044-2057 • E-ISSN: 1911-1568
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3138/diaspora.9.2.163
OpenAlexW4247920303
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited28

In 1999, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, members of the Reform and Conservative Jewish movements funded a public campaign on Israel’s city billboards and in the Israeli media, calling on secular Israelis to experience their religious identity afresh. In a backlash against the monopoly and coercion exercised by religious orthodoxy—which has led many Israelis to shed their religious identities to an extent that goes beyond what their socialization by secular Zionism urged—the campaign called upon Israelis to embrace religious pluralism under the slogan “there is more than one way to be a Jew.” Financed by a grant from a Jewish family foundation in San Francisco, this campaign met with a harsh and somewhat violent response from the Israeli ultra-Orthodox sector. A leading ultra-Orthodox figure stated, “Ifthis situation continues, we will have a cultural war here, the likes of which we have not seen in a hundred years” (Sontag)

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