During Rosh Hashanah we had over a young man recently arrived at a local ba’al teshuva yeshiva. He had participated last year in a program on a large university campus in which students are offered $500 for attending ten two-hour evening sessions and two Shabbatonim over the course of a semester. Those studies and a subsequent summer trip to Israel persuaded him to take a year off from his college studies to seriously explore his Judaism in Jerusalem.

In the course of the conversation I asked him whether the offer of $500 really constituted an incentive for participation in the campus program or whether most of those who signed up would have done so anyway. His reply surprised me. He told me that apart from those who entered university already religious he had never met a single Jewish student on his large eastern campus with thousands of Jewish students who had the slightest interest in Judaism. Without the monetary incentive he assured me there would not have been a single participant in the program.

If our young guest’s observation is accurate it constitutes the single most damning critique of Jewish education in America that I have heard. It would seem that American Jewry is unable to instill in its young even the most minimal pride in being Jewish – a pride that might at some point inspire them to learn more about what it means to be Jewish. That would certainly explain why the taboo against intermarriage has virtually disappeared among all but Orthodox Jewish youth.

The history of the Jewish people is the most remarkable ever told – the central role of Judaism to the development of Western civilization the wildly disproportionate contributions of Jews to every branch of human knowledge and above all the survival of the Jewish people in the face of an unbroken chain of tragedies and unspeakable persecutions. Obviously that story cannot be told apart from some understanding of our unique religious beliefs and practices. And thus it is inconceivable – at least to me – that any Jewish student with any sense of the world historic role of his people would have no interest in Judaism.

I will confess that I took our guest’s observation personally. I was raised in a highly identified but not very observant home in which my parents conveyed a strong message to my brothers and I that the most important fact about us was that we were Jewish. Thus it was not inexplicable that four out of five of us embarked at some point on an intensive inquiry to find out what was so important about being Jewish.

For me the decisive moment came on a bus in Jerusalem on the morning of the Entebbe rescue. The electricity on that bus made me wonder why I felt so connected to everyone on the bus despite our disparate backgrounds. My conclusion: Each of us was the product on an unbroken chain of ancestors for whom the power of their belief in Hashem was such that they withstood every stick and resisted every carrot held out to cause them to renounce that belief. And I wondered whether it was still possible to tap into the power of that belief in our day.

But had I not been raised with an intense pride in being Jewish – one of the reasons that I decided to spend a year after graduating law school in Israel – it is doubtful that my thoughts would have taken the direction they did.

The upcoming Aish HaTorah annual dinner in Toronto will honor four sets of parents of Aish graduates including three pairs of brothers who today play a major role in Aish HaTorah’s international organization. One of those graduates told me that when he first arrived on kibbutz after high school he had to ask a Christian volunteer on the kibbutz to clarify for him the difference between the Old Testament and the so-called “New.”

 Yet a common element joined all four sets of parents. They were all active in the Jewish community. Though there may have been little religious observance in the home a sense of pride in being Jewish was instilled. As a consequence it was natural for their sons to come to Israel during academic breaks and they could be challenged to learn something about the heritage about which they knew little but still viewed with pride.

 If American Jewish parents are no longer capable of imbuing their children with even that minimal pride in their Jewishness then the situation is even bleaker than is commonly thought.

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While we were sitting in our succahs a number of individuals and organizations critical of Israel were being exposed as liars.

Most notable among them was J Street which styles itself as “pro-peace pro-Israel” but has never found a single action of the Israeli government worthy of its support. J Street’s executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami has described his group as the “blocking back” for the Obama administration’s agenda in Congress. The Myth and Fact section of J Street’s website took pains to deny any involvement between the organization and controversial speculator and philanthropist George Soros a outspoken promoter of the claim that American foreign policy is subservient to the “Israel Lobby.”

Eli Lake revealed in the September 24 Washington Times that Soros and two of his children contributed $750000 to the organization. Ben-Ami now admits that he had been “less than clear” about Soros’s support. 

Though Soros involvement in J Street garnered the most publicity no less significant was Lake’s revelation that half of J Street’s 2009 operating budget came from a single contributor in Hong Kong one Consolacion Esdicul about whom virtually nothing seems to be known which is highly unusual for someone with that kind of money to give away. Yet J Street’s website claims that the organization receives no funding from any foreign government or agent and that nearly all J Street’s funding comes from Jewish Americans with a small amount from non-Jewish Americans. Revelation of Esdicul’s contribution calls into question the first claim and fully refutes the second.

By way of explanation of Esdicul’s alleged generosity J Street said that Esdicul had been solicited on behalf of J Street by Bill Benter another gentile and one of the world’s largest sports bettors. The odd amount of the donation — $811697 — and the inexplicability of Esdicul’s (or Benter’s for that matter) interest in J Street however suggest that her contribution may have been bundled together from foreign currency contributions from a number of foreign donors who preferred to keep their identities secret. J Street has been repeatedly accused of taking money from various Arab and Muslim individuals and groups. 

Whatever the source of those funds J Street’s credibility has been dramatically eroded even in the White House. In the wake of the disclosures a White House spokesman declined to comment on whether J Street representatives would be on further conference calls with senior administration officials or whether those officials would continue to appear at J Street events.

As if that were not enough another Washington Times story a few days later revealed that J Street had offered to arrange appointments with members of Congress for Judge Richard Goldstone author of the notorious Goldstone Report on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead a regurgitation of Hamas propaganda that has caused Israel untold damage. The article also claimed that Colette Avital J Street’s Israel liason and a former Labor Party MK had resigned over the connection to Goldstone. She flatly denied the claim. But sadly for her she was taped by reporter Ben Birnbaum saying precisely that.

Will anyone in Congress risk association with J Street in light of the serial deceit?

*** 

Former president Bill Clinton told reporters at the Clinton Global Forum two weeks ago that Russian immigrants to Israel constitute a “staggering problem” towards reaching any peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. He expressed doubts that children of Russian immigrants and settlers who comprise an ever larger percentage of IDF troops would agree to evacuate settlers in any peace deal.

To buttress his argument Clinton related a conversation he had with Natan Sharansky at Camp David.  He claimed that Sharansky told him at the time that he could not support a Palestinian state because “I’m Russian . . . I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest.” Clinton’s reputation for veracity or the lack thereof is already firmly cemented. But for the record Sharansky was not at Camp David. And he wrote an entire book The Case for Democracy which did not reject a Palestinian state but rather explained why only a democratic Palestinian state could live in peace with Israel.

More ominous than Clinton’s whopper about his conversation with Sharansky however was the evident intention of the husband of the current secretary of state to put the onus on Israel for the failure to secure a “peace agreement” with the Palestinians. Clinton expressed his confidence that the current Palestinian leadership is serious about a peace deal and would not back out as Arafat did at Camp David in 2000. Even Hamas’s control of Gaza Clinton opined does not constitute an insuperable obstacle because Gazans would vote Fatah back into power in the event that it secured a peace deal.

As political analysis this is ridiculous. Arafat’s enjoyed infinitely more credibility on the Palestinian street than the current Palestinian leadership. If Arafat viewed the offers on the table at Camp David in 2000 as suicidal Abbas and Fayad surely will. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas admits that former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert offered far more than Ehud Barak did at Camp David and that he still rejected those offers out of hand. Not one Palestinian poll has ever found anything close to majority support for a settlement along the lines of those proposed by Clinton at Camp David in 2000. And the chances of Prime Minister Netanyahu topping the offers of Barak or Olmert are nil. Equally nil are the chances of elections in the Gaza Strip any time in the near future.

***

Highly regarded Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood published an op-ed in the Erev Yom Kippur edition of Ha’aretz that properly belongs in the realm of fiction. She cited the report of a group called Save the Children U.K. that children in the area of the West Bank under Israeli control are even more malnourished than those in Gaza and that many kids there are not only developmentally stunted but are dying from related illnesses.

It is quite likely that the cited report contains a great deal of nonsense about the West Bank which is currently experiencing one of the fastest rates of economic growth in the world. (Bill Clinton in the speech mentioned above argued that the far greater prosperity of the West Bank would lead Gazans to favor Fatah over Hamas.) But the “facts” quoted by Atwood are nowhere to be found. CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) reported that the 70-page document “says nothing about child malnutrition or mortality either caused by illnesses related to malnutrition developmental stunting or otherwise.” What is most galling about Atwood’s op-ed however is that an Israeli paper printed her false charges without even the most minimal fact-checking.