So Passeth the Jewish Golden Age

I you have 10 minutes to spare, I recommend watching this mini-documentary by Max Blumenthal, in which he visits the Christians United for Israel tour. The upshot is that certain fundamentalist Christians, seeking to hasten the apocalypse by bringing about a sequence of obscure Biblical events that includes Israel conquering parts of the Middle East (and then later getting conquered by Russia and the Arabs), have allied themselves with some Jewish American groups that believes Israel's security can only be guaranteed by a U.S. attack on Iran.

Sounds like a joke, right? Just watch the documentary. The vision of Pentecostals dancing fervently to Shalom Aleichem should remove any doubts.

I'm not too worried about these sorts of groups threatening our national security. The idea that Bush or Cheney has bought into the apocalyptic-cult line of thinking seems a little far-fetched (Rove did call these people "the nuts"), and the constituency for apocalypse-based foreign policy seems fairly small.

More worrying, however, is the implication for Jewish politics in America. In the mid-century, American Jews had no problems supporting U.S. military aid to Israel - Israel was a democracy threatened by autocracies seeking to destroy it, it was a U.S. ally, and U.S. power seemed like the best worldwide guarantor of the sort of liberal political order that would prevent another Holocaust.

Today, however, the situation has changed dramatically. Israel is now the top dog in the region militarily, and is more likely to be seen bombing Lebanese civilians or walling in West Bank towns than fending off bloodthirsty Arab armies. U.S. power has been used in Iraq in a distinctly non-liberal, aggressive way. And the biggest American supporters of Israel are no longer liberals, but Christian conservatives eager for allies in the greater struggle against Islamic power.

So the Jewish population of America has split long political lines. Some, like Joe Lieberman (who spoke at the Christians United for Israel tour), still push the U.S-Israel alliance and military action as the best way to ensure Israel's security, and are willing to embrace their new conservative allies, even if those allies look disturbingly like Christian versions of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Other Jewish Americans smell a rat, and strongly suspect that the conservatives will turn on the Jews at an inopportune moment, much as the Crusaders paused to slaughter Jews and Orthodox Christians on their way to fight the Muslims. These Jews may care about Israel's fate, but don't for one second believe that evangelical Christians are the right allies or that military aggression is the right tactic.

Still other Jews feel less and less of a kinship with Israelis, with whom they share few bonds of language, culture, or race; to this third group, America, not Israel, has become the Jews' permanent home. To people who feel this way, the main question is not what will U.S. policies will help Israel's security, but whether those policies are too costly or dangerous for America. I count myself a member of this third group.

In any case, the Iraq war and the Bush administration may be remembered as the rock that finally broke apart Jewish solidarity. Thanks in part to Iraq, Jewish Americans are finally starting to split along traditional political lines - conservatives who value ethnic and religious identity versus liberals who value political ideals. This means that Jews will no longer be able to act as a solid bloc to advance their interests. But the normalization of the Jews also signals that they have assimilated into broader American culture, and will soon be little different than Methodists or Lutherans or Unitarians. Maybe that will put an end to all those conspiracy theories...well, probably not.

So passeth the Golden Age of American Jews. I suppose it was fun while it lasted, but, you know, there's something to be said for quitting job of "chosen people," and just being people.