According to a poll conducted last month by Hebrew University’s Harry Truman Center and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, roughly two-thirds of both Israelis and Palestinians believe the chances of implementing a two-state solution in the next five years is low or nonexistent. The one-state solution, on the other hand, enjoys the support of only one-third of both peoples, although this has increased by over 10 percent in the past year.

But the lack of confidence in a two-state solution and limited support for a single state should not mean the conflict is destined for intractability. Other options exist. Those that creatively incorporate elements of both the two- and one-state models are being examined by some Israeli and Palestinian civil society groups and academics. And this simple act could yield positive results.

One explanation of the low support for the single state solution is the suspicion both Israelis and Palestinians have of each other’s intentions. Many people on both sides view such arrangements as favoring the rights and national aims of one side over the other, thereby framing the conflict as a zero-sum game.

We need to “expand the pie” and reformulate the zero-sum equation to one in which the two sides share resources like land, instead of dividing them. Such a framework could focus on the new benefits both sides stand to gain, rather than what each side must compromise on.

In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, there are two widely ignored alternative models that do just that.

One model is a federation between Israel and Palestine that acknowledges the intimate and small geographic area of the land, while addressing the desires of different communities and ethnic groups for national self-determination. Unlike past proposals that envisioned a wider regional federation that included Jordan, the current models are limited to Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

Most federal models include a number of administrative regions that are largely autonomous but still subordinate to a federal government whose jurisdiction is limited in scope to areas of shared concern. The sovereign concept of territorial control is maintained while obviating the need to sacrifice territory.

The federal model offers an interesting solution for Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital. The holy city would be the seat of a federal government that serves both nationalities equally. Administratively, it would fall under the control of no single national group or district.

One group promoting a federal model is the Federation of Israel-Palestine, a civil society group composed of both Palestinians and Israelis, which focuses on new potential mechanisms for solving the conflict. Late last year the group planned to hold symbolic elections for 300 districts within Israel and Palestine to form a third, federal government. Palestinian anti-normalisation protesters, however, prevented the event from taking place, highlighting the difficulty of introducing alternative ideas into the mainstream.

Another model being discussed is also composed of separate Israeli and Palestinian governments within a single state, but unlike the federal model it does so without delineating internal geographic boundaries. The idea, which has not been implemented anywhere else in the world, was formulated by Israeli and Palestinian academics working with Lund University, in Sweden, on the Parallel States Project. In this project’s model, parallel state governments based on national identity would govern religion, culture and nationality for their citizens regardless of where they live within the territory. The two governments would coordinate security, infrastructure and other areas of shared concern.

These models face serious challenges and have significant shortcomings; neither adequately addresses how military and security forces are controlled or defines their role. Another problem is that an end to violence must precede any resolution that does not physically separate the two sides. While they have yet to gain traction amongst the general public, they are becoming better known in civil society and academic circles.

By combining and incorporating elements of both one and two-state solutions, there is an opportunity to reformulate the stakes and expand the possibilities for reaching an agreement.

Surely, if the current process and ideas are not working, it can’t hurt to look at others. Introducing new ideas into the Israeli and Palestinian discourse could revitalize the peace process and reveal undiscovered paths to overcoming seemingly intractable differences that have led to its stagnation.

Michael Omer-Man is a staff writer and breaking news editor for The Jerusalem Post’s online edition. He has an academic background in conflict resolution. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

A haredi Orthodox man watching Israeli soldiers as an army ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Feb. 22, 2012. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90/JTA)

(JTA) – Israel’s new unity government may not alter Jerusalem’s strategy for curbing Iran’s nuclear weapons program or do much to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

It could, however, dramatically change something at home about which a huge number of Israelis care deeply: haredi Orthodox exemptions from military service.

For years, haredi issues have been something of a third rail in Israeli politics. Nearly every government in recent years has needed the haredi parties to cobble together a governing coalition, rendering haredi entitlement programs like the military exemption politically untouchable.

This long has irritated Israelis who serve in the army and resent that the haredim, by and large, do not serve yet draw all sorts of entitlement payments from the state.

But with Shaul Mofaz’s decision to bring his Kadima party and its 28 seats into the ruling coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu no longer needs the haredi parties to keep his government in power. They could pull out, and it would make no real difference — at least until the elections that are scheduled for October 2013.

How far will Netanyahu go in taking advantage of a historic opportunity to end the special treatment for haredi Israelis?

The question is likely to hinge on political considerations.

Already there is movement on finding an alternative to the Tal Law, which granted military exemptions to haredi Israeli men but was struck down several months ago by Israel’s Supreme Court. The court ordered that an alternative to the law be put into place by Aug. 1.

Crafting an alternative to the Tal Law is one of the top four priorities set forth by the new government coalition. The other three are passing a comprehensive budget, reforming the structure of government and making progress toward peace. The budget issue is expected to be resolved one way or the other, as budgets generally are, but there is something pie in the sky about the other two priorities.

That leaves the Tal Law alternative as the potential historical legacy of this 18-month alliance between Netanyahu and Mofaz.

On Tuesday, that alternative began to take shape.

The Jerusalem Post reported that under the Mofaz-Netanyahu deal, haredi exemptions from the army would be replaced by a Basic Law — the Israeli equivalent to a constitutional amendment — requiring all citizens to perform military or civilian service.

Last month, Kadima proposed instituting a universal military draft within five years. Under the Kadima plan, all Israelis either would serve in the military or do national service in a variety of fields, among them education, health and domestic security. Those who fail to comply would be barred from receiving any state funding.

The question is whether such a plan, which would radically alter the relationship between the state and its rapidly growing haredi Orthodox population, could survive opposition from Israel’s haredi Orthodox parties.

Netanyahu doesn’t need them to survive in office until the next elections. Indeed, if he were to push through such legislation, it could earn his Likud party much broader support, including from secular and more centrist voters, the next time Israel goes to the polls.

But it could cost Netanyahu in October 2013 if Likud wins the election, Kadima fares poorly and Netanyahu needs the haredi parties to form a coalition.

Those considerations, political analysts say, will mitigate whatever changes are made to haredi exemptions.

Some other factors are at play, too.

For one thing, while in principle most Israelis would like haredim to be subject to the same requirements of service demanded of all other Israelis, in practice the army does not want a sudden flood of tens of thousands of new haredi recruits. The Israel Defense Forces lacks the infrastructure to absorb them, both in numbers and operationally. What would the army do with 10,000 new recruits who are religiously opposed to significant interaction with female instructors?

Also, a dramatic transformation of the relationship between haredim and the state would run up against opposition not only from haredi parties in the Knesset but from haredi citizens. They would see the sudden change as a broadside against their way of life, and mass demonstrations and even riots likely would ensue. It would make the haredi riots against parking lots opening on the Sabbath and a Modern Orthodox girls’ school in Beit Shemesh seem like child’s play.

The reality is that Israel doesn’t want all these haredim in the army .What Israel wants is more haredi men working, paying taxes and integrated into Israeli society.

Under the current system, haredi men must stay in yeshiva until their 30s to keep their military exemption (religious women are granted exemptions from army service upon request). That has helped bankrupt the haredi community and nurture a black market economy in which many haredi men work surreptitiously and do not pay taxes.

Changing the rule would help drive haredim into the workforce and into better-paying jobs. That would help Israel’s tax rolls, reduce haredi dependency on welfare and help integrate haredim into Israeli society.

There is great debate within the haredi community about whether or not to welcome these changes. Some haredim see it as key to the economic and social survival of their community. But other haredi leaders see it as opening up a slipperly slope away from the yeshiva and Jewish observance and toward the dangerous temptations of modern, secular Israel.

Ultimately, whatever change comes to the haredi community is likely to come gradually.

Kadima has proposed exempting 1,000 haredi yeshiva students from the military draft and allowing others to defer military service on a year-by-year basis while they are studying in yeshiva. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, Likud is likely to propose an alternative that instead would establish a minimum number of haredi participants in national service programs that would increase every year without a cap on those claiming yeshiva-related exemptions from service.

For now, the haredi parties appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach.

“There can’t be a situation in Israel in 2012 where someone who wants to study Torah will not be able to do so,” Yakov Litzman of the United Torah Judaism party told the Post. “But as long as the principle of torato Omunato

[Torah is one’s work] is preserved, UTJ will remain in the coalition.”

Even though — perhaps because — many Russian-speaking Jews were deprived for years of a Jewish education or the ability to affiliate with other Jews, the strong emotional connection that many Russian-speaking Jews have with their Jewishness and to Israel and the Jewish world at large is tribal. This stands in contrast to the majority of North American Jews who define their Jewishness as a religious identity.

While the Russian-speaking Jewish community, particularly the second generation, has gained much success in commerce, the arts, technology and medicine, I am concerned about its third generation. Without even a faint memory of life behind the Iron Curtain, my children’s children will need more than an ethnic sense of connectedness if they are to choose being Jewish. And unless the organized Jewish community can figure out how to tap into the potential of what is undeniably a vast infusion of energy, passion and creativity, we are looking at an epic failure in recognizing and addressing a game-changing opportunity.

Twenty percent of the Jewish world is Russian speaking, but it occupies only a small percentage of our thinking as an organized Jewish community. While the members of an emerging generation of Russian-speaking Jews worldwide are connected to one another and feel a strong kinship with Israel, their strong identity is decidedly not reflected in affiliation with organized Jewish life.

Perhaps a million Jews remain in the former Soviet Union, but most are highly assimilated and it is estimated that our outreach efforts are only reaching 8 percent to 15 percent of them. The majority of the 1 million Russian-speaking Jews who are now making a tremendous impact in Israel remain disconnected from the Jewish communal milieu. More than 200,000 Russian-speaking Jews now live dispersed across 180 communities in Germany, where a generation without great knowledge or practice of Judaism has no Jewish community to seek.

And in North America, where Google, PayPal and VoiceOver IP would not exist if not for Russian-speaking Jews, synagogues and federations — the core institutions of Jewish communal life — barely register on the Russian-speaking Jew’s radar.

To be fair, some of the more visionary leaders do get it. In partnership with UJA-Federation of New York, the Wexner Heritage Foundation, which identifies young, talented and committed Jewish leaders from across the professional spectrum and trains them in contemporary Jewish leadership, has launched a cohort exclusively for Russian-speaking Jews. It is a great model. But unless it is scaled and replicated by federations across North America, the impact will be negligible. We need a cadre of Russian-speaking Jewish lay leaders in every major city.

The second issue is directly related to the first. Once these talented and motivated people are ready to lead, they will need to be continually engaged. There is a severe lack of first- and second-generation Russian-speaking professionals in the Jewish communal arena who, through shared history and personal experiences, can harness the energy of potential leaders and keep them involved. In North America, there are less than a few dozen trained Russian-speaking Jewish communal professionals to work with a population of 500,000. Building a platform to sustain the engagement of networked lay and professional leaders should be a top priority.

The third challenge is more deeply rooted in the psyches of many Russian-speaking Jews: the notion of “collective” response. Not surprisingly, the idea of centralized giving and planning does not sit very well with a population that associates collectivism with identity suppression, corruption and inefficiency. To many it is what they were all too happy to leave behind.

We need to explore models by which Russian-speaking Jews do not feel threatened but rather empowered to innovate, and where there is flexibility for them to direct their philanthropy in accordance with their own ideas as Jews.

At The Jewish Agency for Israel, we’ve found that the high-profile visibility of Israel’s struggle can be a powerful window of opportunity for mobilizing their support. A recent Brandeis University study of Birthright Israel applicants and alumni, focusing on those with at least one Russian-born parent, showed their emotional attachment to Israel and global Jewry to be much higher than that of their American peers, despite a weaker knowledge of Judaism. Given the positive backdrop with which to work, but cognizant of the dangers looming if these Jews are not brought into the broader communal framework, this is indeed the time to act.

But this is not just the work of The Jewish Agency. There is too much to do; the entire Jewish community must make up for lost time. Today, with the assimilation rates in the Jewish community in general reaching alarming levels, and given the high percentage of Russian-speaking Jews in the overall Jewish population, we must recognize that a strong Jewish future requires that they be a significant part of it.

(Misha Galperin is the president and CEO of international development at the Jewish Agency for Israel.)

The great Jewish historian, Salo W. Baron, famously criticized the “lachrymose” conception of Jewish history, by which he meant the reduction of the Jewish experience to a series of gory persecutions. This view of the Jewish past often colors our sense of the Jewish present, with the result that we see ourselves as having few friends, or even none at all, in a hostile world that resents the re-

establishment of Jewish sovereignty after centuries when Jews were at the mercy of others.

Thinking this way can be dangerous. I say this not because I make light of the threat posed to Israel by Iran, say, or because I don’t regard anti-Semitism in Europe and in the Islamic world as a major problem. I say this because we shouldn’t allow the fixations of enemies to divert us from the reality that we do have friends — and that we owe these friends our support when they fall upon dark times.

Last month, the Islamist regime that has ruled Sudan since coming to power through a military coup in 1989 declared a new war against the neighboring state of South Sudan. The newest member of the United Nations, South Sudan declared its independence in July 2011, following a referendum in which almost 100 percent of participants opted to separate from the predominantly Arab and Muslim north. For nearly 30 years, Sudan waged a brutal war against the largely Christian, African south, in which around 2 million people lost their lives.

Jewish communities around the world, and especially here in North America, need to flex their muscles in support of South Sudan. The ethical imperative is clear, as anyone following the brutal campaign waged by the Sudanese regime in the Nuba mountains in recent weeks would be aware.

But there is also a political imperative. Israel was one of the first states to recognize South Sudan. At the end of 2011, Salva Kiir, South Sudan’s combative president, visited Israel and spoke of his wish to move his country’s embassy to Jerusalem. Israeli aid and development agencies, often assisted by Jewish organizations like the American Jewish Committee’s Africa Institute, have, over the years, played a major role in building up the South’s economy and infrastructure.

Hence, the bottom line is this: in a region filled to the brim with hateful enemies and fair-weather allies, South Sudan is the only state that can truly be called a friend of Israel. The origins of this friendship stretch back to the early years of the State of Israel, when David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, articulated a strategy known as the “Alliance of the Periphery,” whereby the non-Arab and non-Muslim populations in the Middle East — Kurds, Iranians, Lebanese Christians and so forth — were regarded as natural partners in countering the Arab campaign against the Jewish state.

Jewish communities in the diaspora should also be advocating for a renewed “Alliance of the Periphery.” After all, when we hear the blood-curdling declamations of Sudan’s dictator, the indicted war criminal Omar al Bashir, against the “insects” running South Sudan, how can we not be stirred by the parallels with the Iranian regime’s anti-Israel rhetoric, or the fulminations against the “sons of pigs and monkeys” across the Islamic world, or even the dehumanizing verbal assaults by the Nazis upon the Jews?

Throughout much of the conflict over the last decade in the Darfur region of western Sudan, American Jews were a vital base of support and awareness. Synagogues and community centers across the country were draped in “Save Darfur” banners. When 100,000 people turned out for an April 2006 rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., a huge number of the participants were drawn from Jewish communities. There is no reason why this impressive solidarity should not be reignited for the people of South Sudan.

Only this time, we should be explicit that we support South Sudan because we are Jews. Their foes are also ours; for example, many of the organizations that traipse around American university campuses preaching hatred of Israel have also portrayed the Darfur campaign as a nefarious tool of Zionist influence, much to the glee of Sudan’s rulers, who quickly jumped on the bandwagon by claiming that talk of a genocide was a Zionist myth.

Sadly, Jews have a tendency to become nervous in such situations. Rather than celebrating our political influence, we seek to bury it behind inter-group and inter-faith coalitions. It is not that such coalitions are unwelcome; the problem is that many Jews apparently believe that the more universal a campaign is, the more acceptable it will be in the court of public opinion, and the less selfish we will look.

If we want to boost the pride of our friends, we need to boost the pride in ourselves. For the best coalition of all is still to be formed: one in which Jews, Kurds, Southern Sudanese, Lebanese Christians, Iranian democrats and others seeking to combat the malign influences of Islamism and Arab chauvinism gather under one roof, supporting each other as equals. As Herzl said, “If you will it, it is no dream.”

Ben Cohen is a senior columnist for JointMedia News Service. His commentaries have also appeared in The New York Post, Fox News,PJ Media and other media outlets. Cohen is president of The Ladder Group, a communications consultancy based in New York City.

The ZOA led the campaign to have discrimination against Jewish students recognized as a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, originally passed in 1964 to remedy racial discrimination in programs that receive federal funding. But in its charge to circle the Jewish communal wagons, the ZOA has overreached.

ZOA President Morton Klein and Susan Tuchman, director of the group’s Center for Law and Justice, wrote in a JTA op-ed that Jewish college students today face “harassment and discrimination at schools receiving federal funding” (see azjewishpost. com/?p=14596). The ZOA pitched a six-year fit about it, which the group credits with this triumph: “The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, finally clarified in October 2010 that Jewish students finally would be afforded the same protection” other minorities have under Title VI.

The ZOA campaign capitalizes on and needlessly exacerbates the Jewish community’s already unwarranted paranoia about what’s happening to our young men and women on campus. As a member of the class of 2011, and as the editor of New Voices, I can say with confidence that there’s never been a better time to walk the halls and lawns of American academia as a Jew.

Thankfully, the response from leading groups like the Anti-Defamation League to the ZOA’s call to steamroll colleges into submission with Title VI has been tepid at best.

It’s good that Jews are covered by Title VI, but let’s make sure we use the coverage to protect ourselves from true hatemongers, not mere political opponents. That the ZOA is at the vanguard on this issue — instead of, say, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which has been unfairly pilloried by Title VI’s Jewish cheering section for cautioning restraint — should be the first clue that this push to sue universities under civil rights legislation is not just about protecting Jews.

In the race to ferret out Israel’s on-campus detractors, ZOA leaders have conflated two unlike things: They wrongly act as though opposition to Zionism is always anti-Semitism. It’s not so simple.

As much as our rightmost flank would like for Zionism to be codified into the Jewish faith — perhaps a 14th for Maimonides’ 13 principles? — it is neither universal nor central. Rather it is a political movement, one that gives expression to an ancient Jewish hope, but a political movement nonetheless. Zionism itself is no more at the essence of Jewish belief than is membership in large suburban synagogues.

Klein and Tuchman are right that there have been Jewish Title VI victories, but in their rush to stoke our anxiety about Jewish life on campus they skip over the real wins, which have involved high schools, not colleges. Instead they cite statements issued by University of California President Mark Yudof and Rutgers University President Richard McCormick condemning behavior on campus that was downright nasty and might be seen as anti-Semitic as well.

But Title VI is a federal law. Shouldn’t the real wins come in court or official rulings by the OCR? In fact, such outcomes have been mixed, at best. A case against the University of California, Berkeley, was dismissed by a federal court. One complaint at the University of California, Irvine, was tossed out before Title VI covered Jews but is now being reconsidered. At Barnard College in New York, one was tossed out this year when it became clear that there was nothing more than dubious he said/she said evidence.

The real successes have come at the high school level. A case regarding a bullied Virginia high school student was ruled in the complainant’s favor. The Forward recently reported that this is the only case so far to result in such a ruling. Most important, the incident did not involve Israel but

classic swastika-laden, anti-Semitic tropes. When less confrontational means fail, true anti-Semitism like this should certainly be fought under Title VI — wherever this filth rears its head, be it on a college campus, in a high school or, God forbid, in younger grades.

Meanwhile, the ZOA-backed college cases — attempts to use Title VI as a bludgeon to advance the ZOA’s far-right political viewpoints — aren’t going anywhere. In at least one example, it has even led to the despicable targeting of fellow Jews. As Shani Chabansky, a Jewish student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, wrote in February in New Voices and the Forward, a Title VI complaint at UCSC has sparked a witch hunt within the Jewish community, hurting more than helping many Jewish students. These students, Jews of the political left, have been shamefully accused of being anti-Israel.

The ZOA’s intent is now clear: Its use of Title VI is a political tactic that targets valid, albeit distasteful and wrongheaded, political debate. Even as a transparent attempt to stifle legitimate discourse, the ZOA’s Title VI campaign is hardly the success that Klein and Tuchman make it out to be.

David A.M. Wilensky is the editor of New Voices Magazine and executive director of the Jewish Student Press Service.

In fact, the NAACP fought for Title VI’s passage and has vigorously sought to enforce it to uphold the right of African Americans to be free from discrimination.

Jewish students are facing their own serious problems of harassment and discrimination at schools receiving federal funding. After a six-year campaign by the Zionist Organization of America, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, finally clarified in October 2010 that Jewish students finally would be afforded the same protection from harassment and discrimination under Title VI that other minorities have enjoyed for close to 50 years.

Yet instead of embracing the new legal protection, some in the Jewish community have been strangely critical of it.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs describes itself as “the representative voice of the organized American Jewish community” in the Jewish community relations field. Its national member agencies include the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and more than 100 Jewish community relations councils throughout the country.

A year after the Office for Civil Rights’ policy clarification, the JCPA proposed a resolution regarding Title VI. Instead of praising the new policy and committing to a nationwide campaign to educate Jewish students and university officials about students’ right to be protected from anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination under Title VI, the JCPA resolution tried to impose unreasonably harsh standards on when Jewish students should use the law to rectify a hostile anti-Semitic school environment — stricter even than the standards that the Office for Civil Rights applies.

Critics of the new Title VI policy have paid little attention to the fact that the policy has already shown its value. University of California President Mark Yudof recently issued a public statement in which he condemned anti-Semitic harassment on the UC campuses. This month, Rutgers University President Richard McCormick issued a statement publicly condemning a student paper, The Medium, for falsely claiming that an article mocking the Holocaust had been written by a vocal Jewish, pro-Israel student. McCormick said that “no individual student should be subject to such a vicious, provocative, and hurtful piece, regardless of whether First Amendment protections apply to such expression.”

Significantly, McCormick had failed to condemn previous anti-Semitic incidents on campus. It is likely that OCR’s Title VI policy, which recommends that university leaders label certain incidents as anti-Semitic, played a role in the decisions of both McCormick and Yudof to speak out. Surely also at play was the fact that there are Title VI investigations pending against their schools.

The David Project recently issued a report about rethinking Israel advocacy on campus. Curiously, the report cautions that “legitimate efforts to combat campus anti-Semitism could be complicated by overly aggressive complaints” under Title VI.  But what are “legitimate efforts”? And what does the David Project mean by “overly aggressive”?

Only weeks after the Office for Civil Rights issued its new Title VI policy, the ZOA was able to use it effectively without even filing a complaint with the OCR. We contacted officials at a Maine high school where there was longstanding anti-Semitic harassment and informed them of their Title VI obligations. The school acted on nearly all our recommendations and rectified the situation.

Would the David Project consider our actions legitimate or overly aggressive? What if school officials had refused to fix the problems? Would a Title VI complaint then have been legitimate?

It is difficult to understand why members of the Jewish community are skeptical of a critical new legal tool under Title VI or why they are sending a cautious message about using it. We should be fully supportive of Jewish students and holding schools accountable when they don’t respond to campus anti-Semitism.

It’s time for us to stop being “shah-still” frightened Jews of the previous generation and start strongly speaking out on behalf of our Jewish brethren when necessary.

(Morton A. Klein is the national president of the Zionist Organization of America. Susan B. Tuchman is the director of the ZOA’s Center for Law and Justice.)
 

While their arguments differ, they all concede that religions — Christianity and Judaism, and ones from further East — have done a remarkable job creating harmonious communities, at least over the long haul of history. Moreover, religions have proven markedly adept at helping people cope with the agonies and ecstasies of human experience.

“God may be dead,” de Botton, an atheist born to secular Jewish parents, writes in his new book, “Religion for Atheists,” “but the urgent issues which impelled us to make him up still stir and demand resolutions.”

“The error of modern atheism has been to overlook how many aspects of the faiths remain relevant even after their central tenets have been dismissed.”

Can religion, especially Judaism, work if you don’t believe in God? To many Jews, this argument may seem unremarkable. In fact, it may seem eerily like a description of American Judaism today. It is not so much that most Jews in America define themselves as atheist — though, according to the latest research, almost 20 percent do. It’s that the question of whether God exists, in striking contrast to Christianity, is almost beside the point to how Jews define their identity.

“The religion has a lot of meaning even without God,” said Asher Lopatin, an Orthodox rabbi who leads the Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation in Chicago.

Lopatin, a Rhodes scholar recently named one of Newsweek’s “Top 50 Rabbis in America,” was not advocating for a Judaism without God. But he did think Judaism, even Orthodox Judaism, was getting along just fine without a strong emphasis on one.

He cited a 19th-century Talmudic commentary admitting a similar point, as if to suggest that his view was nothing radical. The idea was essentially that all rabbinic commentary, Lopatin paraphrased, “should be able to explain everything in the Jewish religion without having God in the picture.”

Interviews with rabbis of many denominations, as well as Jewish academics and intellectuals, elicited similar responses.

“The cliché is that Judaism is about deed, not creed. But there’s a lot of truth in that,” said Jay Michaelson, a prominent Jewish writer and thinker, who says he believes in a Spinozian-type God (“God does not exist; God is existence itself,” he said, summing it up.)

“The innovation was Christianity, which said that if you believe in Christ, you are redeemed,” he said. “In Judaism, questions of belief in God are secondary.”

Alan Mittleman, a professor of modern Jewish philosophy at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, said that “I imagine many Jews go to shul, even Modern Orthodox shuls, and have doubts about God. But still they feel deeply committed to Jewish life and the mitzvot.”

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, a philosopher and novelist who describes herself as an atheist Jew, put it this way: “Judaism isn’t a doctrinal religion. We do need community, and we do need these rituals that mark important times in our lives. But somehow it’s survived even having been cut off from theology.”

Like several others interviewed, she dubbed American Judaism today, at least the most prevalent forms, as being “post-theological.”

The latest statistics seem to fit these impressions. According to the Public Religion Research Institute’s survey on American Jewish values released this month, religious observance was a distant third in what Jews described as the most important quality of their Jewish identity. The most common answer, at roughly 50 percent, was “a commitment to social equality,” followed by support for Israel at 20 percent.

“Religious observance,” the closest quality to something like belief, was cited as the most important quality of Judaism only 17 percent of the time.

The data also showed that while about 70 percent of Jews define themselves through a religious movement — Reform, Conservative or Orthodox — the other 30 percent see Judaism as more of a cultural identity, calling themselves “just Jewish.” And when asked whether Jews of any kind believed in God, 18 percent said they did not. (Forty percent said they believed in an “impersonal God,” while 26 percent said they believed in a God they saw as “a person with whom one can have a relationship.”)

None of this gives a clear picture of what Jews actually believe or what they believe Judaism essentially is — a set of beliefs codified in laws or a culture. But many of the rabbis and scholars interviewed for this article gave a similar description of the Jewish landscape.

Most Jews today, they said, tend to de-emphasize the question of belief in God and instead focus on other modes of identity: a connection to Israel, or to Jewish history and culture, or even with rituals and religious traditions — but understood as inherently meaningful, not necessarily because they connect to God.

This is not a new phenomenon, however. Elliot Cosgrove, a Conservative rabbi who leads the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, and author of “Jewish Theology in Our Time” (2010), dated the idea of Judaism as a culture that includes religious practice — but is much more — to the early 20th-century American rabbi Mordecai Kaplan.

A prominent figure, Kaplan argued in his landmark book “Judaism as a Civilization” (1934) that Judaism was essentially an ancient civilization. What mattered was ethics, not belief. Yet Jewish laws and rituals — that is, the stuff of traditional religion — were worth preserving as a means of sharing collectively in a rich and vibrant past.

While the Reconstructionist movement founded by Kaplan has only a nominal place in American Jewish life today — 1 percent of Jews identity as Reconstructionist, according to the survey — his other legacy, Jewish community centers, was more successful. More important, his conception of Judaism as civilization, re-branded today as “culture,” is perhaps his most resounding legacy.

But not everyone sees the idea of Judaism as a culture or “Judaism without God” as good for the faith. Asked whether Judaism can remain a coherent entity, even one defined as a culture, without a strong belief in God, some were ominous.

“Without God playing a central role, Judaism will collapse,” said David Wolpe, a Conservative rabbi who leads the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. (He is also a regular contributor to The Jewish Week and topped this year’s Newsweek list.) He dismissed the idea of preserving religious rituals as merely valuable “traditions” — a common description since “Fiddler on the Roof,” if not Kaplan.

“In the end, traditions are hard to maintain unless there’s an attempt to understand the traditions in a deep way, and that God is central to those traditions,” he said.

His argument cannot be described as generational. Wolpe may be in his 50s, but some younger rabbis serving mostly youthful populations made a similar case. Dan Ain, a 35-year-old Conservative rabbi and the 92YTribeca’s rabbi in residence, said a Jewish identity that pays little attention to theology “isn’t going to cut it anymore in the 21st century.”

“What we’re really experiencing now is a real crisis in Jewish life,” he said, referring to both the divisive debates over Israel — once a pillar of Jewish unity — and financial hardships stemming from the economy. Both individual Jews and Jewish institutions, especially ones that foster Jewish identity through cultural experiences, have suffered because of the downturn.

Ain said because of this, Jews want to tap into religious faith, but Jewish leaders have left them ill equipped. “People are looking for God in their lives,” he said, but rabbis and Jewish organizations have not given them the ability to connect with God on a spiritual and Jewish level.

That lack of strong belief, or confusion over what it is Jews believe, stems in part from Judaism itself. From a historical perspective, rabbis have often come up with competing notions of what God actually is — from mystical, kabbalistic ideas that stress a God who created, then removed himself from the world, to the Maimonidean notion that any attempt to understand God through human faculties — language or reason — ultimately fails because God is beyond all understanding.

“Depending on how you look at it, it’s either really liberating or really confusing,” Cosgrove said. On the one hand, the diversity of theological ideas about God might create a larger tent for religious belief. But for others, it might be profoundly frustrating: so many Gods, which one to choose?

But like many others, Cosgrove said that part of the problem was with Jewish institutions today — synagogues, Hebrew schools and JCCs. They do a poor job of educating Jews on what God may or may not be.

“For many of us,” said Michaelson, “our concept of God stopped evolving when we were 13. If you believe ‘the old man in the sky’ is idiotic, odds are you’re not going to continue believing in God as an educated adult. So our God concept needs to grow up like we do.”

Leora Batnitzky, a professor of religion at Princeton University, said, “I think the answer is better Jewish education that teaches all the main ideas about God. Then Jews can decide for themselves what they believe.”

Batnitzky recently argued in her book “How Judaism Became a Religion” (2011) that the idea of Judaism as a religion rather than a culture is actually a modern one. Prior to European emancipation, in the late-18th century, Jews lived in autonomous communities where all aspects of life were regulated by rabbis. That effectively made Judaism an entire culture. It is only as Jews entered an increasingly secular world that Judaism began to be conceived as a religion to be separated from all other aspects of life.

And yet she comes to the same conclusion as rabbis like Ain and Wolpe.

“I think belief in God will be more important in the future than in the past,” Batnitzky said in an interview. Given the difficulties that other secular Jewish identities have had sustaining themselves in the past century — Zionist, Yiddish socialist, secular humanist Judaism — she believes a more traditional Jewish identity, one centered on religious practices and belief in God, will become more important.

Moreover, partaking in religious rituals without having a firm belief in God as their foundation doesn’t bode well for Judaism’s survival. The rituals, conceived of only as “traditions,” won’t hold up to scrutiny unless they are backed by a more powerful concept like God.

“What the question of God is about is truth,” she said. “So people will begin to ask, ‘Is there any truth in this tradition?’”

Eric Herschthal is a staff writer for the N.Y. Jewish Week.

For more than 2,500 years these fast days have remained on the Jewish religious calendar, and the Book of Lamentations continues to be read on Tisha b’Av. This is as it should be.

Even though it is a far more recent horror, the Holocaust was no less a national Jewish catastrophe than the destruction of the first and second Temples. Yom HaShoah, designated as the official Jewish day of remembrance for the millions annihilated by Nazi Germany and its multinational accomplices, is as ritually significant and divinely inspired as Tisha b’Av. This year, Yom HaShoah falls on April 19.

The preservation and transmission of our parents’ and grandparents’ memories is the most critical mission to which the children and grandchildren of survivors must dedicate themselves to ensure meaningful and authentic Holocaust remembrance in future generations. As the ranks of those who suffered alongside the murdered victims of the Holocaust steadily dwindle, the task becomes ever more urgent.

In his keynote address at the First International Conference of Children of Holocaust Survivors in 1984, Elie Wiesel mandated us to do what the survivors “have tried to do — and more: to keep our tale alive — and sacred.”

“You have screened Yourself off with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through,” we read in Lamentations. And yet it is told that Reb Azriel David Fastag, a disciple of the Chasidic rebbe of Modzhitz, spontaneously composed and began to sing what has become the best-known melody to Maimonides’ 12th Principle of Jewish Faith while in a cattle car from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp: “Ani ma’amin be’emuna sh’leima, b’viat hamashiach; v’af al pi she’yismameya, im kol zeh, achakeh lo b’chol yom she’yavo” — “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and even though he may tarry, nevertheless I will wait every day for him to come.”

A young Jew managed to escape from the Treblinka-bound train, taking with him the niggun, the melody, of Fastag’s “Ani Ma’amin.” Eventually the melody reached the Modzhitzer rebbe, who is said to have exclaimed, “With this niggun, the Jewish people went to the gas chambers, and with this niggun, the Jews will march to greet Moshiach.”

My mother, who had survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, died in 1997 hours after the end of Rosh Hashanah. Six months later I took our daughter, Jodi, then a college sophomore, to Poland for the first time. She and my mother had been very close and spent a great deal of time together as Jodi was growing up. We went to Warsaw and Krakow, and then to Auschwitz.

On a gray day with a constant drizzle, I showed Jodi Block 11 — the death block at Auschwitz where my father was tortured for months. Then we went to Birkenau, where we walked in silence past the decaying wooden barracks. After 15 or 20 minutes, Jodi turned to me and said, “You know, it looks exactly the way Dassah [which is what she called my mother, Hadassah] — it looks exactly the way Dassah described it.”

I realized that a transfer of memory had taken place. My daughter, born 33 years after the Holocaust, had recognized Birkenau through my mother’s eyes, through my mother’s memories that Jodi had absorbed into her consciousness.

For the past several years, grandchildren of survivors at Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City have described their grandparents’ experiences as a core element of what is evolving as our Yom HaShoah liturgy. Thus deportations, separations from parents and siblings, selections for the gas chambers, desperate escapes, nighttime ambushes of Nazi troops by partisan units, and avoiding death in secret hiding spaces and on forged identity papers cease to be abstract concepts.

As family histories merge with haunting songs and melodies that were sung in the ghettos and camps, we are reminded that these firsthand, personal accounts that together chronicle the enormity of the Holocaust must enter our theology just as the testimonies of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel became part of our Scripture.

At the Passover seder we recite “B’chol dor vador chayav adam lir’ot et atzmo ke-ilu hu yatza mi-mitzrayim” — “In each generation it is incumbent on each of us to see ourselves as if we had come out of Egypt.”

We have been entrusted with a precious and fragile inheritance that ultimately belongs to the entire Jewish people and to humankind. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, each of us, and our children and our children’s children, must also see ourselves as if we had emerged from Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and all the other ghettos and camps, the forests and secret hiding places of Nazi Europe. To do so, all of us, and our children and our children’s children, must discover the past by immersing ourselves as best we can in the survivors’ memories until they become a part of us.

(Menachem Z. Rosensaft is vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. He teaches about the law of genocide and World War II war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia, Cornell and Syracuse universities.)

“This school looks like a prison,” one of my fellow travelers whispers.

Many of the children are huddled in coats; schools in this neighborhood do not have heat, and the unexpected rain and cool air chill the room.

Overcrowded classrooms, minimal instruction hours in core subjects and a shortage of qualified teachers have taken a toll on the country’s education system. These children must study in an NGO-funded afterschool program to gain the basic academic foundation they need to break the cycle of poverty.

This scene took place last month not in a Third World country but in Israel — a country that leads the world in patents per capita, is known for its technology startups and boasts 10 Nobel laureates, but also leads in some other frightening statistics.

On the most recent PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) exam, Israeli students ranked 25th out of students from 25 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries in academic achievements. Israel’s weakest students scored last among the weakest students from the participating OECD countries; its strongest students were 24th out of 25.

Israeli children are products of an education system that has been in decline for decades. Studies by many leading organizations, including Israel’s own Taub Center, reveal the link between a country’s educational achievement and its economic stability. As Israel’s education levels have decreased, wages have declined and the quality of life has dropped.

Israel likely will have to wrestle with the ramifications of having at least one generation of undereducated children who are ill suited to compete in today’s world. If trends continues, wages will continue to fall, and more people will be underemployed or unemployed and increasingly reliant on the government for subsistence. What kind of picture does that paint for Israel’s future?

To be sure, education is just one of Israel’s pressing societal issues. Last summer, Israelis demanded access to more affordable housing, medical care and other basic necessities. In addition to the need for social infrastructure, outside pressures are also very real. Just last month, approximately 200,000 children in southern Israel could not even attend school because of missile attacks from Gaza.

The answers to Israel’s education woes are not simple, but here are a few steps Israel could consider to move in the right direction:

* Put more emphasis and resources on the core subjects critical for participation in a global economy. I have been hearing demands recently for increased emphasis on Jewish studies or Zionist history in the public school curriculum; I won’t comment on the importance of these subjects. I will say that Israeli children must excel in math, science and literacy to succeed in a global workforce. Those core subjects need to get the attention first.

* Improve training, support and pay for teachers. Israeli teachers are woefully underpaid when compared to their OECD peers. They also receive less training and professional development. Give Israeli teachers the tools, training and mentoring they need to improve classroom outcomes.

* Raise the standards for becoming a teacher. If the government gives more, it should get more in return. Most Israeli teachers graduate from one of many three-year teacher colleges; the range of requirements and quality varies greatly among the schools. Teachers are not required to have a four-year university degree, let alone a master’s or other advanced degree. Require the academic excellence of the teachers we want from the children.

* Reach the children who have been “left behind.” Systemic change takes time. Meanwhile, a whole generation of children remains ill equipped to handle the complexities of today’s workforce. Get them the programs they need to catch up and to maximize their academic achievement. It may feel like a band-aid approach, but we can’t let communities bleed to death.

These are just four steps. There are many others to consider and the challenge can seem overwhelming. However, as the sense of urgency surrounding this crisis continues to grow, I am confident that a partnership of government, NGOs and philanthropists can create the long-term solution that will enable Israel to not just survive but thrive.

(Karen Berman is the executive director of the Youth Renewal Fund, a New York-based organization that provides supplemental education to disadvantaged Israeli children. The views expressed here are her own.)
 

In the case of SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps — it’s because we have let a politically devised gross mischaracterization define how most people understand the program.

This partisan rhetoric has only intensified lately because of the upcoming presidential election. In the midst of all the speechmaking, Congress seems primed to cut SNAP, which certainly will have a devastating impact on 50 million of our fellow Americans.

As leaders of national advocacy organizations, we cannot stand by while the health and well-being of one of every six American men, women and children are threatened. As leaders of Jewish advocacy organizations, we are further compelled to act by the arrival of Passover, a holiday that opens with an invitation to “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”

If we do nothing to confront the prevailing rhetoric or challenge cuts to SNAP in the next Farm Bill, we not only will be abandoning our principles but also dishonoring the sincerity of our Passover invitation.

Every five years, the Farm Bill reauthorization process gives us a chance to re-examine our national priorities with regard to food. The bill has far-reaching impact, containing an array of titles that cover the whole process, from seed to table. Simply, the bill brings the bounty of our country’s farms to the tables of rich and poor. One of the primary ways it reaches the latter is through SNAP, which provides food assistance to those who might otherwise not have enough resources to eat. And this vital program accomplishes its function with great success.

SNAP is specifically designed to be responsive to economic conditions — to expand when the U.S. economy is weak and unemployment is high, and then to contract when the economy improves and more people are back to work. What could be timelier than providing help only when people need it?

Moreover, this help is provided with great efficiency. Exemplary among government programs, SNAP has a nearly unparalleled record of program integrity and a historically low improper payment rate of just 3.8 percent. This means more than 96 percent of SNAP benefits are accurately and appropriately delivered to those who are eligible to receive them.

For this highly targeted group of people, SNAP is nothing short of a lifesaver that spares them from having to choose between food and other necessities such as rent, utilities and health care.

A program, then, that saves lives so effectively deserves to have its story told with facts, not distorted narrative. Contrary to what some would have you believe, for the vast majority of the 46 million Americans currently on SNAP (over half of whom are children or seniors), the program serves not as a permanent handout from the government but a temporary bridge to get past hard times. On average, SNAP recipients transition off the program in nine months — receiving benefits just long enough to find a new job or get back on their feet.

But the best way to reduce reliance on SNAP is to build a stronger economy, and strengthening SNAP is one of the surest ways that Congress can contribute to our recovery. The money these families spend on food quickly goes directly into their local economy, helping to support the community and stave off further unemployment.

In addition, according to a recent census report, in 2010 SNAP helped lift 3.9 million people out of poverty. Instead of feeding a cycle of poverty, SNAP helps prevent people from being enslaved by one.

At Passover we are reminded that we once were slaves but now we are free. Like the liberty our ancestors won, millions fewer Americans feel the oppression of hunger because of SNAP. But this accomplishment, worthy of celebration as it is, is not enough. Far too many Americans still struggle with hunger, and even more will do so if funding for SNAP is cut. And so we must continue to be vigilant.

For the fourth year, our organizations are sponsoring more than 50 Hunger Seders (www.HungerSeder.org ) taking place in communities across the country that will increase awareness about hunger and urge participants to take action. On March 29 we hosted the National Hunger Seder at the Capitol that united members of Congress, administration officials and national anti-hunger advocates in our commitment to freedom from hunger for all Americans.

If the Farm Bill sets the priorities for our national harvest, then from our perspective SNAP gives us a legislative means of realizing our biblical commandment to leave the “gleanings of your harvest” for “the poor and the stranger” (Lev. 23:22).  By strengthening SNAP, we help fulfill that sacred mandate with a response that is timely, targeted and temporary. And in ensuring freedom from hunger, we also honor the Passover holiday now upon us.

(Rabbi Steve Gutow is the president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the public affairs arm of the organized Jewish community. Abby Leibman is the president and CEO of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing and alleviating hunger among people of all faiths and backgrounds.)