I recently heard words that made me clench my hands with pain in my chest.
They were something like “How could those stupid America Jews basically vote for the American left instead for Israel.”
I spent plenty of time online trying to convince non-Orthodox Jews to vote pro-Israel. At a time when I was still on Facebook, I got into plenty of arguments. People were approaching politics like it was a faith-based religion.
So, the bulk of American Jewry, even if we discount those who simply call themselves Jews but aren't halakhically Jewish, voted for the left and against Israel. Those “stupid Jews.” Only, they are still MY Jews. And I still lvoe them, despite the pain and feeling of betrayal and very real danger they’ve put Israel in by voting for an increasingly anti-Israel American left.
I personally take responsibility for "the stupid American Jews."
They are a product of that part of failed Orthodoxy that didn't have what it takes to keep their kids from leaving them, much as some parts of Orthodoxy are experiencing in Israel today. It's an Orthodoxy that doesn't make people feel good, is judgemental, doesn't embrace, stares down and is critical.
American Orthodoxy, in too many instances, bled out its children by not even TRYING to answer the questions of their age in the 1940s and 50s. Those kids replaced Orthodoxy with non-Orthodoxy and the liberalism of the Democratic party, which slowly merged into one ideology.
I searched high and low for ways to keep and bring back these masses. I used Chabad, Aish, Rabbi Amnon Yitzchaq, 'Arachim, Ben Ish Chai, R. Avigdor Miller, Torah Tapes, R. Kahane's "Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews," R. Dov Fisch's "Jews for Nothing," R. Mayer Schiller's "The Road Back," R. Shelomo Carlebach's songs & techniques (from face to face meetings), Lithuanian primary text analysis, R. Kelemen's books, R. Orlofsky, R. Jonathan Taub, gourmet kosher meals, vodka-spiked crushed-ice Pina Colada (and that's just off the top of my head) - and we were able to bring back maybe 60 neshamot, plus, hopefully, their descendants and their waves and ripples.
Yet when we left America, I felt like Oskar Schindler when he said “he could have saved more.” I felt guilty. In America I’d go into Jewish-owned stores of highly assimilated Jews and ask if I could blow the shofar (during Elul). Doing so in Jerusalem where you can hear it out the window would not come close to having the same effect.
Chabad and Aish online (as well as other sites) are having a tremendous effect, But if we don’t step out of line and show seeming BASELESS love towards those non-Orthodox adherents and make a place for them (wthout accepting their non-Orthodox movements).. and I have so much to say about this and think about it for hours every day, then, for myself, I’d know I have not done enough. And, the stupid American Jew is here, it's me.