![American Jews [Illustrative]](https://images.jpost.com/image/upload/f_auto,fl_lossy/q_auto/c_fill,g_faces:center,h_720,w_1280/433149 "American Jews [Illustrative]")
On a cloudless November morning, the National Mall – once host to the roaring crowds of Louis Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March – filled again, this time with hundreds of thousands of American Jews.
As hostility toward Israel surged in the wake of October 7, 2023, Jews from across the Diaspora came to stand in open solidarity, unafraid, Stars and Stripes grasped in hand, white and blue draped across their shoulders.
It was a powerful moment. Yet I struggle to recall an equivalent when Jerusalem’s city center or Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Square filled in reciprocated solidarity.
That begs the question: Why the imbalance?
There are some that will answer Israel’s right-wing government, Israeli chauvinism, or even some condescension inherent to the Zionist project. But none captures the truth.
Israelis care deeply about their Diaspora brethren. From the beaches of Tel Aviv to the jungles of Thailand and Cambodia, the sight of a Diaspora Jew reliably brings a smile to an Israeli’s face – just as it does in reverse. According to an American Jewish Committee survey focusing on millennials, 89% of Israeli Jewish millennials say it is important that the American Jewish community and Israel maintain close ties (with 46% saying it is “very important”).
The issue is not one of sentiment. It is structural. The relationship is unreciprocated – not because of indifference, but because it is asymmetrical.
To put it simply, Israel is the Diaspora’s beloved partner; the Diaspora is Israel’s beloved cousin.
I will spare you the Song of Songs quotations, but the Diaspora’s relationship to Israel is fundamentally romantic. Much like romantic love, the Diaspora experiences Israel’s pain as if it were inflicted on its own body; its mind is constantly filled with thoughts of the object of its affection. Diaspora Jews who writhed in pain on October 7 and have since spent hundreds of hours immersed in Israeli news can attest to this visceral attachment.
The most striking feature of this dynamic is how it distorts reality. Under its spell, Israel’s many flaws are softened, explained away, or simply unseen. In the diasporic imagination, Israel hovers between a political cause and an intimate reality. It is not encountered as a place of mundane routines, bureaucratic compromises, and grinding necessities, but as an object of devotion – almost religious in character.
Familial relations and separate households
And like romantic attachments, the reckoning with reality can be brutal. When the object of affection is revealed in full, flaws and all, the contrast can evoke not disappointment but revulsion. Hell, as the saying goes, has no fury like a woman scorned – and Israel has no enemy quite like those raised to love her.
Israel’s relationship to the Diaspora is closer to that of a family member. The primary concern is not mutual affection but their own interest. There isn’t a lack of love in the relationship, but romance is not the organizing principle.
After all, Israel does not dream of a thriving Diaspora in the way the Diaspora dreams of Israel. It does not send resources to ensure the Diaspora’s independence, plant forests on its behalf, or necessarily dispatch its children to experience life in its society. The emotional traffic is simply asymmetrical.
The same poll that showed the relationship also found that among Israeli millennials, only 9% feel a great deal of responsibility to help fellow Jews in the United States, 33% feel some responsibility, 30% feel not much, and 18% feel none.
And yet, when a family member is in crisis, Israel acts out of familial solidarity backed by national power. Whether through emergency airlifts from Yemen or by offering citizenship to persecuted masses, Israel plays the role of the capable relative who intervenes decisively when the rest of the family has nowhere else to go.
Without tracing the historical origins of this dynamic, it is worth examining its consequences.
Those Diaspora Jews who criticize Israel for disregarding the increased danger they have suffered during the Israel-Hamas War are, in large part, victims of miscommunication. Their fundamental criticism is correct: the safety of Diaspora communities was not a primary – perhaps not even a secondary – consideration in Israel’s war planning.
Why? Because while cousins may love each other deeply, they ultimately run separate households. When forced to make harrowing, split-second decisions to protect its own borders and citizens, Israel acts as a sovereign nation, not a family committee.
Some in the Diaspora, understanding the relationship as at least partially reciprocal, feel shunned. No one expects young Israelis to tour their history in the Lower East Side, but as a partner in a relationship, there is an assumption that they have some voice at the decision-making table.
Like a scorned lover, part of the Diaspora has responded by trying to reassert its independence from an inconsiderate partner – retreating into forms of Jewish life that predate the relationship altogether. One can see this impulse in the small and ultimately doomed revival of Yiddishism, a cultural turn away from Israel as the central axis of Jewish identity.
But if most in the Diaspora were to attempt such a move, they would discover how difficult it is. Many can no longer remember a time when their Jewish lives were not oriented around Israel. Their institutions, education, and emotional investments were built in relation to it.
In that realization lies the uncomfortable truth: the relationship is no longer just asymmetrical but also dependent.
But the asymmetry between Israel and the Diaspora is not just a source of misunderstanding and miscommunication.
Look at the “refuseniks” – the Soviet Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain, whose long march toward freedom became a cause célèbre in the Diaspora. Their plight galvanized tens of thousands to protest and raised millions of dollars in advocacy and aid.
In Israel, the street was far less interested.
And yet, when the Iron Curtain finally fell, where did the vast majority of Soviet Jews go? They didn’t flock to the centers of Diaspora activism; they went to Israel.
The Diaspora provided the passionate devotion of an advocate, while Israel provided the concrete refuge of a family member.
Setting aside the political maneuvering that secured this outcome, there is a profound beauty in how the two entities provided vastly different, yet complementary, lifelines to the oppressed Jewish community.
Is the relationship perfect? Far from it. But what relationships are?