Today, a staggering 50% of married, self-identified Reform Jews have a non-Jewish spouse. The intermarriage numbers in the Conservative movement are, unfortunately, growing as well. Both movements are shrinking, unable to predict where and what they will be by the time the next Pew report is issued.
If we are going to consider the popular consensus of the active Jewish community, then we must incorporate the views of hundreds of thousands of American Jews, in fact the most strongly Jewish affiliated, who do not currently have a voice at the Conference table.
Traditional Orthodox Jews, who the media prefer to label Ultra-Orthodox or Hasidic, care deeply about the land and people of Israel, send their sons and daughters to study in Israel, vacation in Israel, and have family living in Israel. There are vast numbers of Jews, while not fully observant to Orthodox standards, are affiliated with the over 1000 Chabad Lubavitch centers nationwide, and other groups in the Orthodox community. Their children are receiving a Jewish education, their intermarriage rate is in the low single digits, and they too care deeply about Israel. It is very doubtful that J Street has any support in either of these very large constituencies.
Add in the memberships of the Young Israel, the Orthodox Union, the RCA, the Religious Zionists of America, Emunah, Amit, ZOA, Camera, JINSA, and many others, religious, Zionistic and secular, and the popular vote, of the Jews in our greater community, definitely agree with the decision of the Conference of Presidents’ super majority.
J Street may be loud, they may have strong support from some liberal Jewish leaders, but I would strongly suggest that their support lies with a small minority of the American Jewish community. It is not without cause that their attempt to supplant AIPAC as the respected voice of pro-Israel advocacy has proven an utter failure. Most Jews see J Street as an organization attempting to do an end-run around Israeli democracy, badly out of sync with our brethren in Israel.
It remains difficult to find a statement of PA President Mahmoud Abbas that J Street does not at least defend, if not explicitly endorse – even, most recently, responding “with caution” to reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, a terrorist organization still committed to the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of its Jewish residents, and urging the United States to “press forward with an even more assertive effort” to finalize a two-state solution.
The rejection of J Street by the majority of the Conference of Presidents’ membership was an important moment in American Jewish life. J Street’s positions are dangerous to the State of Israel, and are outside the Jewish mainstream. Denying them a seat at the table sends a strong message: before you can be part of the communal conversation, your views must lie within the community.
We can agree that the Jewish community needs to be represented within a big tent, but every tent has walls to keep certain people out, and to protect the people on the inside. A group that wants to negotiate with a terrorist organization whose stated objective is the murder of Jewish men, women and children, and the destruction of Israel, does not belong at the table with the Conference of Presidents, and does not belong in the big tent.