Answering Beinart's ‘damning’ indictment of the American Jewish establishment

Jewish World Review ^ | May 26, 2010 | Jonathan Rosenblum

[rmlew]

What the scribe conveniently Left out --- and yet why the questions he raises matter

Peter Beinart's "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" in last week's New York Review of Books is an important piece — important in the same way as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's 2006 screed "The Israeli Lobby:" It will be widely quoted and pernicious in effect.

Beinart begins with the results of focus groups conducted by pollster Frank Luntz with Jewish college students in 2003. In their discussions of Jewish identity, the subject of Israel never arose spontaneously, and when forced upon them, the students were careful to distinguish between themselves and Israelis." First and foremost, the students "reserve[d] the right to question the Israeli position." Second, "they desperately want peace." And third, "some empathize with the plight of the Palestinians."

[rmlew]

Most young American Jews don't care about reality facing Israel because their actual faith is liberalism. Unlike the author, I do find this to be an indictment of the liberal Jewish establishment. Liberals raise leftist and universalist children.

[rmlew]

ping

[TopQuark]

"Liberals raise leftist and universalist children."

That is exactly right.

[arthurus]

So do Conservatives who pay their children’s way through Ivy League schools.

[rmlew]

ACtually, many conservatives, myself included, became more conservative at Ivy League Schools. And I hardly find the Ivies worse than any other set of colleges save religious ones.

[TopQuark]

True. But the brainless donors bother me even more.

[jjotto]

Where’s the surprise that leaders who take God out of their equations inevitably end up failures?

The real leadership of the Jewish people - the heads of the great yeshivas and Chassidic groups and a few others - continue to build the Jewish world that will not fade away with political and cultural winds.

[arthurus]

I think the phenomenon of President Obama is reshaping our relationship with China even now, and with the rest of the world, especially with those who mean us harm. Either he is a terribly insulated bright fool or he is a Mohammedan doing for America that which Islam requires.

[arthurus]

The operative phrase characteristic is expenses paid education.
I knew a lot of those in FSU many years ago and FSU was not quite so flagrantly left at the time as other schools or as it is now. They were the ones who had no input into their own support. They thought the modern world and all its comforts just is and would get all philosophical about it and wonder why this bounty couldn’t be divided up more “equitably.”