Future American Support for Israel Dropping

As readers of this blog must know by now, I've always been very cynical or doubtful about American support of Israel. The United States State Department has been anti-Israel from the days of Harry S. Truman, when they recommended voting against a Jewish State. And they haven't changed their approach, even though Israel has been threatened and attacked constantly over the past seventy years. The totally fokokt idea that there can be a "Two State Solution" is their ideal, and if it endangers Israel, they don't care.

Of course, American politicians claim to be pro-Israel, and it's not because of the Jewish vote. There's a minuscule amount of Jewish voters in the USA.

• But a lot of money comes into the campaign accounts from Jews, who don't feel comfortable with an obviously anti-Israel candidate. 
• Christian Zionist and Bible belt voters are very numerous as Hillary Clinton discovered November, 2016. They have no sympathy for the various ideologies of the extreme Left. 

Ambitious candidates/politicians claim to love Israel while they simultaneously support policies that can only endanger the State of Israel. The radically Leftist, pro-Palestinian J-Street has become the darling of the Democratic Party, academics and the international media. 

This is causing a serious drop in future Jewish support for Israel. Liberal American Jewish youth's estrangement from Israel by Matthew M. Hausman on Arutz 7.

In recent years, fundraisers from Israel have found it much easier to get donations from Christian groups, rather than from Jews. The more secular and/or Leftist Jews give their money to Left wing and non-Jewish causes. Mainstream Israel is not their priority. If they support Israeli funds, it's the New Israel Fund and NGOs that give to Arabs for humanitarian and "Jewish-Arab co-existence."

There are many Jews who do support Israel and Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Golan, but most of them don't have the financial luxury to donate much money. Jewish Life in the United States is very expensive. Synagogue dues, Jewish school tuition and university education for their children have caused many people reduce their donations. Many Jewish families are surprised and shocked to discover that their children coming home from college now sympathize with the Arabs, rather than identify with Jewish Israelis.

I am very pessimistic about future support for Israel in the United States. And the worst thing is that I don't see a solution to the problem. The State of Israel will be more and more isolated. We must get stronger and stop all dependency on foreign countries and organizations. We don't need them if we obey Gd.

Jerusalem, Capital of the State of Israel

Six Days War, Lots of Memories But No Pictures

This is how I looked when in high school. I'd wear sweatshirts from NCSY or Seminars decorated with SSSJ buttons. I was the true non-conformist. No green bookbags for me!

In my last couple of years there, in Great Neck North, I became a big Jewish activist. It began when I got involved in the synagogue's NCSY chapter, which led me to SSSJ-Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, TLS-Yeshiva University Seminars and then to the Betar Zionist Youth Movement. To put it very mildly, if I didn't fit into Great Neck society before, (we only moved there in 1962 when I was thirteen 13,) the the new Zionist and Orthodox Jew was definitely an oddball and hadn't a chance in hell to ever fit in.

If someone was writing a screenplay or coming of age novel, they'd love the timing of it all, since I graduated in 1967, which for a very involved Jew and Zionist as I had become, was the perfect time to have a major crisis or change.

As high school was finishing, most of my classmates were busy with prom plans, graduation parties etc. I was just counting the days to be out of that place.

When the threats against Israel began in May, we began fundraising. One Sunday, the kids in my NCSY chapter made a "workday," and people paid us to do all sorts of chores. The payment went to NCSY's Torah Fund to be transferred to some project in Israel.

I have memories of standing outside of some Jewish event in Manhattan, holding two corners of an Israeli Flag, while someone else had the other two, and passersby put money on the flag. I think I did that with my Betar friends. I ended up joining Betar at the beginning of my senior year in high school, when Israeli Folk Dancing just wasn't enough for my budding Jewish activist and Zionist identity. 

There was also a giant meeting in Great Neck for the Jewish Community, which had the participation of all four rabbis, Rabbi Wolf from the Orthodox Great Neck Synagogue, the Conservative rabbi from Temple Israel, and the two Reform from Temples Beth El and Emanuel. I was an usher.

During the war, our class had its Senior Class Beach Day at Jones Beach, which I was required to attend. Attendance was very strict in those days. I walked around collecting money for Israel from my classmates, the Jewish ones. One, who was dating a non-Jew at the time, got into a big fight with his girlfriend when he donated. Some told me that their parents had "donated tanks" etc. Great Neck had some very wealthy people. The nickels and dimes I managed to  collect were nothing compared to the real fundraisers.

And finally, where was I when I saw the broadcast of the IDF paratroopers crying at the Kotel, Western Wall at that first moving prayer? I was across the street from my house babysitting. I'm glad the kids were all asleep, because as I heard the soldiers crying, I cried, too.

Just over three years later, I was married and we made aliyah. I just can't imagine living anyplace else but in Israel!

Here I am getting the National Standards Award from NCSY at the 1967 National Convention, just a few weeks after the Israeli Victory in the Six Days War! My dress was bright orange.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein's Narrow "Bridge," A Book Review

As I read Zev Chafets' fascinating biography of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, I kept on thinking of various titles to call the review I was to write, like "The Fine Line" or "Tightrope," but in the end played with the book's title, The Bridge Builder.

First of all I must say that Zev Chafets did a great job writing this book. My gut feeling all along, and before reading it, was not to like Eckstein. Even though I know a number of people who do a bit of what Eckstein does, and my husband and I have had dealings with Christian zionists for decades, I'm more negative than ambivalent about the dependence Israel and Jewish social/financial/charity funding has on Christian, especially evangelical money. I must admit that decades ago, many times I had hosted groups of Christians in my home and led them on tours of Tel Shiloh and very happily accepted their monetary thanks. But as time went on I became more and more uncomfortable with the close relations that were being established. Was this all one big, rich Trojan horse? Were they really out to buy our souls?

Apparently Eckstein, too, in the beginning felt that your ordinary Jew could not be expected to know how to counter the theology problem. It's one thing for Jews to accept the money, but there could be theological influences when getting too close to enthusiastic Christians. Too many Jews are too ignorant of Judaism to understand the nuances and protect their Jewish religious identity.

Eckstein confided a lot to Chafets, who wrote of Eckstein's difficult relationship with a cold, critical father. Eckstein found more warmth and acceptance in the Christian and especially evangelical leadership, though he keeps on insisting that he has always remained an Orthodox Jew, praying to Gd, keeping Shabbat and Kashrut.

Eckstein's close relations with Christians, also, caused the Kollel, Torah Study Center, which he had been attending to question his allegiance to Judaism, causing him great emotional and spiritual pain. This was before his stupendous financial fundraising success.

And all along, there have been Jewish groups that while being grateful for the money would refuse to allow it to be revealed that Eckstein's Christian donors were the source. When Eckstein made having a proper sign as recognition, some groups refused the money.  But many more accept and request more and more funds.  The numbers, the millions of dollars donated to Jews all over the world (and also Arabs in Israel) by Eckstein's various funds/organizations stagger the imagination.

Money speaks making Eckstein a very powerful man. He is not the only Jew raising money for Jewish, especially Israeli causes from Christians. Eckstein is the best connected with powerful evangelicals and media personalities.

Zev Chafets makes Yechiel Eckstein into a very likeable person and admits that if he was to have a rabbi, then Eckstein would be the one. There's no claim of objectivity from the author. Yechiel Eckstein is a success story. I know of so many people who tried to make a success at fundraising. Some did well, but nobody reached the volume that Eckstein did, even those who also targeted similar Christians and evangelicals. If you want to know more, then read the book.

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