When American-born Israeli journalist Judy Siegel-Itzkovich returns to the U.S. for the first time in 26 years, she finds much to disparage – from the materialism to the assimilation to the supposed hypocrisy of American Zionism.
She notes that the American Jewish population is shrinking, while Israel’s is growing; she writes of her former neighborhood emptying of moderate Orthodox Zionists and becoming haredi; she finds much to scoff at in the Westchester suburbs of New York, with their gas-guzzling SUVs, Jewish parents who don’t send their kids to Jewish day schools and assimilation.
She writes in The Jerusalem Post:
US Jews have enjoyed a magnificent century of surging wealth, political and cultural influence and primacy in scientific research, medicine, the media and many other professional fields. But I fear they have passed their peak and entered an irreversible decline. If Hadassah is struggling, what about the future of smaller and much less influential Jewish organizations?
Siegel-Itzkovich’s visit may have reinforced her Israeli superiority complex, but her analysis is selective. Post a comment and tell us why.
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