Dimi Reider writes in the Guardian that, much to the chagrin of organizations promoting a vision of purified cultural and territorial Jewish nationalism, Jewish identity is for many Jews inseparable from life in the diaspora:
Today, 112 years after the first Zionist Congress, there are at any given time more Jews outside Israel than inside it, despite murderous ethnic cleansing in Europe, forced-emigration ethnic cleansing in some Arab states and the very real, modern antisemitism that most Jews in the diaspora continue to experience. In other words, many Jews still don’t see their Judaism as a package deal with an Israeli passport or residency. They may be highly observant and have a longer memory of Jewish history than most Jewish Israelis, but their civil, political, and often national loyalty lies firmly with the countries in which they live; they might see themselves as American first and Jewish second, or maybe Republican first, American second, Jew last; they might be ultra-orthodox, firmly separating their approach to the relationship between man and God from their approach to the relationship between man and fellow man; or they might be hedonistic, atheist bohemians that don’t know a word of Hebrew but are keeping Yiddish theatre and music alive for their own wonderful sake.
All these individuals might co-exist in one British or American town, or even in the same family. But there are also Arab and Ethiopian and Chinese Jews, not to mention Judaism-rooted or Judaism-inspired communities. The enormous, wildly colourful tapestry of Judaism and its interpretations (a component of identity, a faith, a heritage, a coincidence, an obligation) is much richer than Israel’s current perception of “who is Jewish” can absorb.
Read the entire article here.