Two days before Tisha B’Av, a cartoon depicting MK Gilad Kariv went viral. The image showed him alongside Palestinian flags, pigs, and bacon, with the caption: “Gilad, bar mitzvah for dogs, Kariv.” I will set aside Kariv’s political positions and his parliamentary record, because the subject here is not really the Knesset member.
This cartoon is not sharp political criticism, and it is not merely tasteless. It is a quiet declaration that non-Orthodox Jews deserve to be treated with contempt. The same people who created it will almost certainly sit on the floor and weep over sinat chinam (baseless hatred) on Tisha B’Av. While doing so, they are producing the complete demonization of any Jew who does not behave exactly as they do.
In recent years, Israelis have been alarmed by the collapse of support among American Jewry specifically, and among the American public more broadly. That collapse is genuinely worrying. Much of it has nothing to do with Israel, but let us talk about the part that does fall within our control.
The support of American Jewry
The vast majority of American Jews identify as Reform or Conservative. The military equipment that has landed in Israel? Most of it was almost certainly funded by Reform and Conservative money. The solidarity missions, the Friends of the IDF donations, the contributions to buildings, organizations, and volunteer initiatives. An enormous volume of generosity and resources flowing into Israel comes from passionate Zionist Jews who define themselves as Reform or Conservative.
When Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich or MK Simcha Rothman march in the Israel Day Parade in New York, many of those marching alongside them are non-Orthodox Zionist Jews. How convenient to forget that over there. How easy to spit on them over here.
This is ingratitude in its plainest form. We expect world Jewry to understand us and support us without reservation, while significant parts of Israeli society continue to despise them and deny the legitimacy of their Jewish identity. An identity they dedicate their lives to preserving, working against enormous odds, without government support, in a world growing more dangerous by the day, facing social pressures that make continuity a near-impossible challenge.
Hatred between Jews
This is sinat chinam in the most literal sense: Jews more preoccupied with denigrating and delegitimizing another Jew’s identity than with uniting against an existential threat. And the threat is more serious than it is comfortable to acknowledge.
Rapid technological disruption, a destabilizing world growing more aggressive by the day, and a wave of delegitimization on a scale we have not seen before. A decline in the political power of American Jews, internal fractures within communities, the fraying of the relationship between American Jewry and Israel, and the collapse of cooperation among Israelis themselves. All of this creates a genuine threat to our people’s ability to meet the challenges piling up against us.
And here is the hardest truth. The fate of the Jewish people rests on its two most successful projects: building the Land of Israel, and the flourishing of American Jewry. If either of those projects collapses, the fate of the entire people is in danger.
So here is a question worth taking into Tisha B’Av this year. Do not mourn only the theoretical sinat chinam of the First and Second Temple periods. Ask yourself what you believe is leading toward a third destruction, and make the decision to do everything in your power to prevent it.
The writer is the CEO of the Ribo Center.