Description: What binds together Jews of Israel and the United States? Amid the hope and frustration generated by the Middle East peace process, the meaning of Jewish statehood is more vigorously contested than ever before. A secular democratic Israel, responsive to Western liberal values, is prepared to make peace with the Palestinians by sacrificing its own historic homeland. But a covenantal Israel, which draws its Jewish identity from divine promise and the biblical narrative, refuses to surrender to modern imperatives. As the very nature of Jewish statehood has become ever more polarized, American Jewish life has been profoundly affected by this fateful Zionist contradiction.
In Are We One? Jerold S. Auerbach presents a surprising new interpretation of this contemporary Jewish dilemma. The modern Jewish impulse to embrace Western values, he writes, exacts a terrible price. He offers a critical reassessment of Zionism, a challenging analysis of the sources of the identification of American Jews with Israel--and a gloomy prognosis of the future of Jewish life, both in Israel and the United States.Review Quotes: [Auerbach] posits that foreign cultures have relentlessly impinged upon Jewish identity and autonomy, even in the Jewish State. Even Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, has been powerless to resist the accelerating process of disintegration. Indeed, he says, æZionism now hastens it along.Æ In a startling book that is sure to create controversy, Auerbach sees that æin the end, it now seems clear, only the continued dilution of Judaism can assure harmonious reconciliation with the liberal pro-choice values that so many American Jews and Israelis fervently embrace.Æ.-- "Booklist"