Are We One?: Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel

"That a Jew feels pain upon recognizing Israel's weakness and decay," Yoram Hazony says, "is a sign of a still-living national consciousness, the essential achievement of Zionism." By this standard, Jerold S. Auerbach's "Are We One?" is an irreplaceable contribution to the literature of Zionism. One-part history and one-part polemic by a distinguished academic historian, Auerbach's book explores the problem of identity in a post-Zionist age. Israelis have become little different from American Jews in their eagerness to "normalize," to throw off their Jewishness and assimilate to a secular Western ideal. "With astonishing speed and indifference," Auerbach writes sadly, "Israel has traded its Jewish birthright for a mess of post-Zionist pottage." "Are We One?" is dedicated to reversing the trend. Auerbach shows that, although they come in for abuse from both Jews and non-Jews who are hostile to it, American Zionists may be the last best hope for the Jewish state. For they are the ones who feel the most pain at Israel's weakness and decay. Auerbach is among the best of them. Like Ruth Wisse, Edward Alexander, and Hillel Halkin--the writers in whose ranks he takes a place with this book--Auerbach is in love with Jewish difference, which alone provides justification for the Jewish state. "Are We One?" spells out the character and significance of that difference. And in doing so it advances, in plain and unflinching and memorable language, a stirring defense of Israel's continued Jewish existence. A must-read for those who are sick of post-Zionist appeasement and defeatism.