Irreconcilable Differences?
Subtitle: The Waning of the American Jewish Love Affair with Israel (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life)
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
Published: February 1, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Library binding
Number of pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780874518979
Subjects: History; Sociology, Social Studies; Social Science; Jewish Sociology; United States; Jews In The U.S.; History - General History; Politics and government; Sociology; USA; Jews; Jewish - General; Middle East - Israel; United States - General; Religion / Judaism / General; Ethnic Studies - General; 20th century; Attitudes toward Israel; Identity
First sentence: American Jews have long been Israel's most ardent foreign supporters.
Description: "Steven T. Rosenthal offers the first full-scale examination of the nature and development of the American Jewish response to Israel. He traces the rise of community consensus and its subsequent dissolution in the face of a series of critical confrontations between American Jews and the Jewish state. In lively prose, he reviews the crises and missteps that transformed this relationship from one of uncritical "Israelotry" to disenchantment and distress.".

"The invasion of Lebanon, the Pollard spy case, the "Who is a Jew?" controversy, and the Palestinian Intifada have shattered American Jewish unanimity, but, as Rosenthal notes, dissolution stems as well from a half century of internal changes and the evolution of Jewish identity in both Israeli and American society.

As Israel's heroic age fades into history, he argues, Israel has become less and less important to American Jews, who are increasingly obsessed with home-grown crises such as the skyrocketing rates of inter-marriage. Meanwhile Israel itself has, in many ways, outgrown its need for American Jewish paternalism."--BOOK JACKET.