A new survey by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) has unveiled a strengthening connection between American Jews, their Jewish identity, and the State of Israel, despite rising antisemitism in the United States. The AJC's 2024 Survey of American Jewish Opinion found that the majority of American Jews are not distancing themselves from their Jewish roots but rather embracing them.

"Despite rising antisemitism making Jews feel less safe, American Jews are defiantly proud about who they are and even more connected to Israel," said AJC CEO Ted Deutch.

The survey revealed that 85% of American Jewish adults believe it is important for the US to support Israel in the aftermath of October 7, and 57% of American Jews report feeling more connected to Israel or their Jewish identity after October 7 than before. When asked what they have done to feel connected, 17% said they have attended synagogue or synagogue events since Hamas' attack.

However, the social cost of being Jewish in America has taken a toll. According to the survey, 64% of American Jews report that since the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent discourse about the war has affected their relationships in some way. More than half (53%) said they have avoided talking about the Israel-Hamas war with other people, and 45% said they have felt unsafe sharing their views on Israel on social media. Alarmingly, more than one in ten (12%) American Jewish adults said they ended a friendship or relationship with a person since October 7 because they expressed antisemitic views.

Rising antisemitism has also led to concerns about the future for some American Jews. Since Hamas' October 7 massacre, 7% say they have considered moving to another country due to antisemitism in the US. When looking solely at American Jews who reported having a strong education about Israel, that number rises to 14%.

Despite growing anxiety due to antisemitism, the survey found that American Jews are leaning into their Jewish identity. While 42% reported feeling unsafe wearing Jewish symbols in public since October 7, 19% said that since the terror attack, they have been wearing signs or items to display their Jewish identity in an effort to feel connected to Israel or their Jewish identity.

The survey also highlighted the impact of education about Israel on the connection American Jews feel toward the Jewish state. More than one in five (22%) American Jews said they had received zero formal education about Israel from kindergarten through grade 12. Those who reported no education about Israel were least likely to say they felt more connected to Israel since October 7 (35%), while 62% of those who characterized their education about Israel as strong said they felt more connected to the Jewish state since October 7.

On the upcoming presidential election, the survey found that 61% of American Jews said they would vote for Joe Biden, while 23% said they would vote for Donald Trump. Additionally, 49% of American Jews believe Biden would be the better choice for preserving the US-Israel relationship, compared to 25% who favor Trump, and 55% favored a Biden administration when it comes to combating antisemitism versus 20% who think Trump would do a better job.

The post AJC survey reveals deepening Israel ties among American Jews post-Oct. 7 appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

While Paul Auster was commonly regarded as a New York novelist, more discerning critics would aptly characterize him as a "Brooklynite" writer. "I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn to me," testifies his character, Tom Wood, in the opening of his 2002 novel, "The Brooklyn Follies." Auster became the face and voice of the huge Brownstone borough long before gentrification, galleries, and co-working spaces. There, in 1982, he wrote "The Invention of Solitude" – the novel that made him an international star almost overnight.

For decades, Auster saw the privilege of urban and existential loneliness as holy and followed it devoutly. He walked from his Park Slope home to the Sweet Melissa Cafe with a short cigar in hand, a black wool coat, and sunglasses. This was a light, refreshing stroll in his grueling work routine. He wrote with a fountain pen and on an Olympia typewriter – which became the name of a heroine in one of his books – and abstained from technology and networks. "Keyboards have always intimidated me," he told the Paris Review in 2003. It wasn't a moral stance, he explained; rather, it was for his comfort.

The self, the introspection, the melancholic and ironic gaze at the body and soul – Auster's writing walked the fine line between loneliness and solitude, and from there it gained strength as a universal literary revelation. "Loneliness proves we are human, because it's the point where we are cut off from our basic needs. It represents a longing to be with other people. oneliness is the opposite of solitude, which can be by choice. A person can never be in a state of loneliness by choice," he said in an interview with Israel Hayom in 2012.

Auggie's photo

Auster was the modernist version of postmodernism. In his book of conversations, "A Life in Words," he testified that "I've always wanted to write what to me is beautiful, true, and good, but I'm also interested in inventing new ways to tell stories. I wanted to turn everything inside out," and expressed an affinity with Jacques Derrida's deconstructionism. However, his language was clear and story-driven, on the seam between urban tales and the mystery genre, and therefore accessible to many readers worldwide.

He was a unique novelist for the parent and child generations for at least two decades – appearing on bookshelves in the East Village and Petah Tikva, and was a superstar in Paris. He was never a top contender for the Nobel Prize, and didn't even win the Booker Prize, and to sum it up in clichés of the trade – he was an author of the people; not of the writers.

Auster excelled at capturing the present and saw life itself as part of literature, in the sense that the self of a person develops just as a character develops in a book, as observed by Will Blythe, the literary editor of Esquire. Hence, perhaps, the temptation to see him as a New Age harbinger, despite being a remnant of a bygone classical era.

His writing could easily be seen as conservatively subversive. Another expression of "Austerianism" can be identified in the ritual of his character Auggie from the screenplay "Smoke," which received a wonderful cinematic adaptation by Wayne Wang in 1995, starring Harvey Keitel. Every morning, precisely at 8:00 a.m., Auggie photographs the opposite corner visible from his Brooklyn tobacco shop; every day, at the same time, from the same angle. Auggie keeps the photos in albums: the changes are minor, almost imperceptible. Yet, over the years, reality is no longer identical to what it once was. A shift has occurred that we didn't notice. Paul Auster was a novelist of a world that was here just a moment ago – and is now gone.

Planting trees for Israel 

Growing up in the post-World War II era by Jewish parents in South Orange, New Jersey, then in the rural area of New York State, and finally in urban Newark. As in every Jewish household on the East Coast in the years back then, the fate of European Jews after the war preoccupied the family. "I grew up with Israel," he recounted in 2012 in the interview with Israel Hayom, "every morning I would go to the Hebrew school in New Jersey, knowing that part of my lessons would be devoted to raising money for the young state. We were busy all the time with planting trees and writing little greeting cards to people in Israel. We felt as though we were part of the state, even though physically we lived far away from it. We, the children and the adults, felt as though we were helping to build a place with new ideals. We were very excited about it."

He visited Israel in the mid-1990s and then in 2010. Since then, he observed that "one of the authors who participated in the festival told me, justifiably, that the feeling is that the Israelis live between despair, which characterizes the Left, and denial, which characterizes the Right, with very little in the middle. The denial is insufferable, it can't survive, and the despair; it also doesn't arouse hope. So everything is stuck."

Befitting a bon ton, he regularly criticized Benjamin Netanyahu, and despite being the flesh and blood of "New York Times Judaism," he looked squarely at the progressive hot air that took over the elite on America's coasts.

In the last decade, he lowered the volume a bit, but still published two prose books, several essay collections, and even a new book of poetry. In December 2022, his novelist wife, Siri Hustvedt, announced his battle with cancer. On April 30, 2024, he passed away. Perhaps he fulfilled what he sought in his first book: "Under any circumstances, he had managed to keep himself at a distance from life, to avoid immersion in the quick of things."

The post Paul Auster was a novelist who saw life as literature appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

I've walked around dozens of cities across the globe while wearing a kippah, but this was the first time Jewish attire put me in danger and it's clear that what I experienced last month is simply another incident in a wave that can no longer be denied. American Jewry is under attack.

 Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Jews are being attacked with knives and guns, physically and verbally, in broad daylight or the dead of night. They are being assaulted in the streets, in their synagogues, and on social media. The virulent eruption is neither isolated nor local. On the East Coast, the West Coast and the vast spaces in between, Jews are in danger simply because they are Jews. This wasn't the case in America a decade ago, but is certainly the reality today. There's no point in pretending anymore.

The even worse news is that we're only at the start of the wave. The bell curve of Jewish existence in the Diaspora tells a clear story: We start at the bottom, reach an apex, and then plummet into an abyss of terrifying violence. Such was our history in Spain, Egypt, and England, in Poland and Russia, Portugal and Iraq, and more. After the golden period, comes the period of hatred. This is what's in store for our brothers and sisters in the United States. Such is the fate of the Jews, to which only Zionism has offered an alternative.

From a state of destitution and indigence in impoverished neighborhoods, the descendants of Jewish immigrants in the United States climbed the social ladder to inhabit a broad range of key positions – in politics, media, business, culture, and technology. It is at this point, history tells us, that hatred begins to foment. This hatred permeated the intellectual elite in the US a long time ago, spread to the ground level and has carved out a niche in politics as well – due to the failure of Democratic leaders to clearly condemn anti-Semitism two years ago. These were the initial signs, which we all found convenient to ignore.

American Jews, and us with them, hoped this time would be different, that history wouldn't repeat itself. It is in this belief that they have marched in the footsteps of their forefathers. Then, too, they thought "this time will be different," that "after all we contributed to the host nation, it won't reject us," and that "the lessons of the past have been learned and therefore history won't repeat itself." Until, of course, reality provided its inevitable, sobering wake-up call.

The Jews in the United States, sadly, are sitting on the precipice of a volcano. The initial upsurge of lava is bubbling, signaling the massive eruption sure to follow. Maybe this will happen in five years, maybe 50, perhaps in the form of a series of shootings or a wave of neighborhood riots; maybe in synagogues or Jewish community centers; maybe in schools or in the streets. American Jewry is in danger. The time has come for it and us to open our eyes and reach the appropriate conclusions.

The post On the precipice of a volcano – history repeating itself for US Jews appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Indeed, while in the decades preceding Israel's independence this support was largely the product of private initiatives by prominent figures such as former Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, after Israel's birth these individual efforts became increasingly comprehensive in nature as organizations and institutions came aboard on behalf of Israel, its security and its welfare.

Thus, alongside notable achievements by figures such as Mike Feldman (who as adviser to President John F. Kennedy played a central role in formulating the trailblazing executive order to sell Hawk missiles to Israel in 1962), it was the pro-Israel organizations in America's domestic arena, chief among them AIPAC, which worked methodically and persistently to upgrade the special relationship between Washington and Jerusalem.

The remarkable headway these organizations made throughout the years wasn't simply due to their organizational and financial capabilities, but because they were operating in a supportive and favorable public environment.

And yet, beyond the perception among Americans that Israel's birth and the values it espoused were fundamentally similar to the American ethos and experience, it was Israel's character as a country of immigrants, with a rich and diverse cultural and ethnic tapestry, that was viewed as analogous to American society.

Amid this backdrop, it was only natural for American Jewry and its institutions to try translating this supportive infrastructure into congruent policy. These efforts were particularly palpable in times of friction and diplomatic fissures, which occasionally sullied the relations (for instance, the "re-evaluation" crisis of late 1974, which ended in President Gerald Ford's administration, amid efforts by AIPAC and Congress, to offer Israel a comprehensive package of compensation and guarantees for withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula).

The fact that the "Jewish vote" in U.S. presidential elections has traditionally carried strategic significance, due to relatively high voter turnout among Jews, the weight and importance of this community has been amplified even more within America's internal discourse – especially because, at least until the beginning of the current century, Jewish communities were predominantly concentrated in key states.

The Pollard affair

Alongside this string of remarkable achievements, the shadows always hid a lurking menace which sporadically tarnished the efforts of American Jewry and often alarmed its leaders. During the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, for example, American Jews and their leaders were largely reluctant to publicly and explicitly advocate for Israel. The fear of being accused of dual loyalty, particularly in the era of the McCarthy witch hunts (which mostly targeted Jews), together with the initial strategic worldview adopted by the Eisenhower administration, which was hostile to Israel – were the primary impetus for this cautious approach.

Without dispute, the scandal surrounding Jonathan Pollard, who was sentenced in 1987 to life in prison for spying for Israel, forced American to Jews to again face complex and difficult questions regarding their loyalties and identities. Today, too, in the era of deep social schisms and ideological polarization, things aren't entirely rosy in the Jewish-American sphere. Indeed, many Jewish Americans, predominantly from the liberal camp of the Democratic Party, are clearly drifting away from Israel.

And yet despite this apparent erosion in support, the Jewish community continues to comprise the core base for the special relationship between the United States and Israel, and we can expect it to provide a safety net for Israel against any challenge and threat in the future as well.

The post American Jewry: Still Israel's most important safety net appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.