It’s been almost a year since St.-Sgt. Dvir Emanuelof became the first casualty of Operation Cast Lead, losing his life to Hamas mortar fire just as he entered Gaza early in the offensive. But sitting with his mother, Dalia, in her living room last week, I was struck not by loss, but by life. And not by grief, but by fervent belief. And by a more recent story about Dvir that simply needs to be told, especially now at Hanukka, our season of miracles.

This past summer, Dalia and some friends planned to go to Hutzot Hayotzer, the artists’ colony constructed each summer outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls. But Dalia’s young daughter objected; she wanted to go a week later, so she could hear Meir Banai in concert.

Dalia consented. And so, a week later, she found herself in the bleachers, waiting with her daughter for the performance to begin. Suddenly, Dalia felt someone touch her shoulder. When she turned around, she saw a little boy, handsome, with blond hair and blue eyes. A kindergarten teacher by profession, Dalia was immediately drawn to the boy, and as they began to speak, she asked him if he’d like to sit next to her.

By now, though, the boy’s father had seen what was unfolding, and called over to him, “Eshel, why don’t you come back and sit next to me and Dvir?” Stunned, Dalia turned around and saw the father holding a baby. “What did you say his name is?” she asked the father.

“Dvir,” responded Benny.

“How old is he?” Dalia asked.

“Six months,” was the reply.

“Forgive my asking,” she continued, “was he born after Cast Lead, or before?”

“After.”

Whereupon Dalia continued, “Please forgive my pressing, but can I ask why you named him Dvir?”

“Because,” Benny explained to her, “the first soldier killed in Cast Lead was named Dvir. His story touched us, and we decided to name our son after him.”

Almost unable to speak, Dalia paused, and said, “I’m that Dvir’s mother.”

Shiri, the baby’s mother, had overheard the conversation, and wasn’t certain that she believed her ears. “That can’t be.”

“It’s true.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Emanuelof.”

“Where do you live?”

“Givat Ze’ev.”

“It is you,” Shiri said. “We meant to invite you to the brit, but we couldn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dalia assured her – “You see, I came anyway.”

And then, Dalia told me, Shiri said something to her that she’ll never forget – “Dvir is sending you a hug, through us.”

At that point in our conversation, Shiri told me her story. She’d been pregnant, she said, in her 33rd or 34th week, and during an ultrasound test, a potentially serious problem with the baby was discovered. After consultations with medical experts, she was told that there was nothing to do. The baby would have to be born, and then the doctors would see what they could do. A day or two later, she was at home, alone, anxious and worried. She lit Hanukka candles, and turned on the news. The story was about Dvir Emanuelof, the first soldier killed in the operation. She saw, she said, the extraordinarily handsome young man, with his now famous smile, and she felt as though she were looking at an angel.

A short while later, Benny came home, and Shiri said to him, “Come sit next to me.” When he’d seated himself down next to her, Shiri said to Benny, “A soldier was killed today.”

“I heard,” he said. “What do you say we name our baby after him?” Shiri asked.

“Okay,” was Benny’s reply.

They told no one about the name, and had planned to call Dalia once the baby was born, to invite her to the brit. But when Dvir was born, Shiri and Benny were busy with medical appointments, and it wasn’t even clear when they would be able to have the brit. By the time the doctor gave them the okay to have the brit, it was no longer respectful to invite Dalia on such short notice, Shiri told me. So they didn’t call her. Not then, and not the day after. Life took its course and they told no one about the origin of Dvir’s name, for they hadn’t yet asked Dalia’s permission.

So no one knew, until that moment when a little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy – whom Dalia now calls “the messenger” – decided to tap Dalia on the shoulder. “Someone’s looking out for us up there,” Shiri said quietly, wiping a tear from her eye, “and this no doubt brings Him joy.”

IT WAS now quiet in Dalia’s living room, the three of us pondering this extraordinary sequence of events, wondering what to make of it. I was struck by the extraordinary bond between these two women, one religious and one traditional but not religious in the classic sense, one who’s now lost a husband and a son and one who’s busy raising two sons.

Unconnected in any way just a year ago, their lives are now inextricably interwoven. And I said to them both, almost whispering, “This is an Israeli story, par excellence.”

As if they’d rehearsed the response, they responded in virtual unison, “No, it’s a Jewish story.”

They’re right, of course. It is the quintessential Jewish story. It is a story of unspoken and inexplicable bonds. It is a story of shared destinies.

And as is true of this little country we call home, it’s often impossible to know which part of the story is the real miracle, and which is the doing of extraordinary people. In the end, though, that doesn’t really matter. When I light Hanukka candles this year, I’m going to be thinking of Dalia. Of Shiri. Of Dvir. And of Dvir.

I’m going to think of their sacrifice. Of their persistent belief. Of their extraordinary decency and goodness.

And as I move that shamash from one candle to the next, I will know that Shiri was right. These are not easy times. These are days when we really could use a miracle or two. So perhaps it really is no accident that now, when we need it most, Dvir is sending us all a hug from heaven above.

‘It never even occurred to me that the Jews were a people.” I had just finished speaking on Shabbat morning at a traditional shul on Long Island. The talk had been about the nation-state and its roots in the Book of Genesis. Along the way, I’d made some comments about the changing nature of American Jewish life today, and the much-reduced role that peoplehood now plays in American Jews’ sense of self.

After services, someone told me that members of the liberal synagogue across the street had come to hear the talk. Ouch. I’d been rather direct about the dangers of liberal American Judaism’s diminishing the role of peoplehood in Jewish life, and worried that I might have offended the visitors.

But it turns out that they were more intrigued than anything else.

One woman said that the idea that the Jews were a people had never occurred to her. Another person remarked that peoplehood was an interesting idea, but warned that if Jews are a people, ” you’re going to cut 40% of my congregation out of the picture.”

Almost without our noticing, American Jewish life is being dramatically redefined. Especially among the young and the liberal, American Judaism is being recreated in the model of American Protestantism.

Christianity is not about peoplehood. “The Christian People” is a meaningless phrase. Judaism, like Protestantism, has become a faith system, a purely personal – and highly individual – means of constructing meaning in our world.

Judaism as a faith system, of course, is nothing new. But from time immemorial, we have also seen ourselves as a people. From the moment that Pharaoh refers to the Jews as “the people, the Children of Israel” (Exodus 1:9), it is clear even to our enemies that Abraham’s clan has morphed into a nation.

FOR MILLENNIA, rank-and-file Jews understood this. We cultivated bonds of mutual obligation, even when we profoundly disagreed, even when our faith wore thin. Kol Yisrael areivim zeh la-zeh, all Jews are responsible one for another, the tradition has long insisted.

And it actually worked. It was peoplehood that got American college students to wage a relentless battle to free Soviet Jews, with whom they had virtually nothing obvious in common.

It was due to peoplehood that IAF pilots flew converted cargo planes into an Ethiopian civil war in order to save people of a different race, a radically different faith system and virtually no shared history, bringing them to Israel in Operation Solomon.

And it is peoplehood that has continually led American Jews – despite their absolute disinterest in making aliya and their profound differences with Israel about conversion policy and the peace process – to support Israel both financially and politically.

This move away from peoplehood will continue as intermarriage becomes more common. Flourishing marriages, after all, are possible even when spouses disagree about important issues. And therefore, in the logic of young American Jews, there’s nothing terribly illogical about my choosing to spend my life with someone who’s not Jewish.

After all, on a host of issues, I have my opinions and she has hers. So, too, in religious life. I have my synagogue, she has her church. I have my holidays and she has hers. I believe my beliefs, and she has hers.

But peoplehood? If I’m a member of a people, then there’s actually a yawning chasm between us. And since she has no interest in becoming Jewish, it’s Judaism – and not she – that must change. Consciously or not, I sense that Judaism must be redefined – as a faith system, a personal odyssey, as “my Judaism,” to use a problematic phrase now popular among American Jews.

As anything but a people.

YET WITHOUT peoplehood at the core of American Jewish life, devotion to Israel becomes a choice, not an instinct, as it used to be. Young American Jews look with horror at the suffering of Palestinians, and decide that this conflict is simply not theirs.

One of the founders of Fast for Gaza (www.fastforgaza.net) wrote recently that “unlike previous generations, [today's young American Jews] don’t necessarily understand their Judaism in traditionally tribal terms anymore. Rather, they are increasingly viewing their Jewishness against a larger, more universal global reality. In short, to be a Jew and a global citizen is what gives them ‘goose bumps.’”

This writer himself admits – the new, personal, less “tribal” (i.e., less peoplehood-oriented) Judaism is more animated by global citizenship than by a sense of Jewish responsibility. (That’s why they fast for Gazans, and not for Israelis under Gaza rocket fire or for Gilad Schalit, I assume.) From afar, it would seem that there is little that Israel and Israelis can do to influence this seismic shift.

But the dangers to Israel’s security as a result of this change are obvious. Something must be done.

One idea for starters: Recent studies show that a quick trip on Birthright has lasting implications for Jewish identification, and dramatically lowers intermarriage rates, for example. It’s because in Israel, Jews encounter peoplehood, with all its problems, but also with its triumphs.

It’s time to take the Birthright concept and expand it. Two-thirds of Canadian Jews and 75 percent of Australian and French Jews have been to Israel, but about two-thirds of American Jews have never even visited. That has to change.

Even in this economy, there is more than enough American Jewish money to get the vast majority of American Jews to Israel, to witness first-hand the power of peoplehood and, perhaps, to transform the dangerous, emerging American Jewish sense that attachment to other Jews and their state is a relic of the past.

We know what’s at stake. Those people who never even imagined that Jews are a people are the men and women who in a generation will be running the federations, many of America’s synagogues and national organizations. They will be setting communal agendas and disbursing American Jews’ money. Either they will argue our case on Capitol Hill, or no one will.

We would be fools to imagine that we do not need those American Jews at our side. But we’d be equally foolish to believe that they’ll care one whit about us, unless we can restore peoplehood to the central value it used to be.

[Photo credit for "The Secret": Zion Ozeri, at www.zionozeri.com]

From a strategic perspective, freeing Gilad Shalit in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians makes no sense. The hundreds of prisoners now in Israeli prison were captured in dangerous operations, many of them at a cost of other Israeli casualties.

The outspoken opponents of the trade, who claim that the freed terrorists will return immediately to terrorist activity and may soon kill more Israelis, could well be right about that, too. So, too, are those who fear that paying such a high price for Sgt. Shalit will only induce Hamas and Hezbollah to try to capture more Israelis, both at home and abroad.

The Shalit case is also a reminder to all Israelis that that many of the once apparently inviolable red lines of Israeli foreign policy are now much more blurred. Despite Israel’s stated position that it will not negotiate with terrorists, Israel is clearly negotiating with Hamas.

We don’t know each other, though I’ve known of you and your work for some time.  Like many others, I recently read your “How I’m Losing My Love For Israel” in the Forward.  Because you write so articulately, and because your column has attracted such widespread attention, I’m taking the liberty of responding.

The truth is, you and I agree about a lot.  We’re both worried about some of what’s happening to Israeli society.  We’re both tired of all the equivocating (though probably for different reasons).  We’d both love some real leadership around here.  We’d both like peace.  And we’re both exhausted.

That exhaustion is the first reason you give for that fact that your “love [for Israel] is starting to wane.”  But frankly, Jay, when you began to write about your exhaustion, I began to lose you.  For, I have to confess, I don’t see the connection between exhaustion and losing love, or between exhaustion and committing oneself to what’s right and just.

I suspect that the Partisans were pretty exhausted, and they might even have debated some of their own tactics; but those were the least of their problems.  Their main worry was that evil might triumph and transform their world into an uninhabitable hell, and their bone-aching fatigue notwithstanding, they committed their lives to making sure that human freedom survived those who wished to eradicate it.

The GI’s who slogged their way across Europe, up the cliffs of Normandy and across the frozen, bitter winters of that blood-soaked continent, were pretty exhausted, too, I’d imagine.  Yes, many of them were kids, following their orders.  And many of them were probably distraught that innocent Europeans were getting killed by the thousands in the process of saving the west.  But many, I would also like to believe, knew that what they were fighting to preserve was infinitely more important than their own personal exhaustion or the tragic innocent losses that war always entails.  Or even their own lives.

That clarity of purpose was, in the end, why we won, and why you and I live in democracies where we can write and say whatever we like.  Had the Partisans and those GI’s given in to their fatigue, would you and I have the very liberties we so easily take for granted? I doubt it.

So, yes, we’re exhausted.  And, if you’ll forgive me, I suspect that those of here are more exhausted than are those of you over there.  Life here is conducted under a pervasive cloud of exhaustion that my most of American friends simply don’t comprehend.  It’s the exhaustion that comes from coming home at the end of the day and finding on your door a diagram distributed by the Home Front Command showing you how many seconds you have to find shelter if a missile should be aimed your way.  What do you do with that information?  Ignore it?  Or put it on the fridge as the sign instructs you to, so you can live with the looming warning every time you go to get a glass of OJ?

But that’s really the least of it.  The real exhaustion here comes from sending a smart but relatively naïve nineteen-year-old daughter off to the army (in Intelligence, in this case) and have her begin to learn things about Israel’s enemies that she will never be able to discuss.  The exhaustion comes from the hollow look of an unfathomable sadness in her eyes when she’s home, from her bewilderment at the evil of which human beings are capable – an awareness a young woman shouldn’t have at that age.  And you grow exhausted because you want to take care of her, to protect her.   But you can’t.

You can’t take care of your kid because this is Israel.  Because she can’t tell you what she knows.  She can’t talk to you about the human capacity for hatred that she now confronts every single day.  And because this is Israel, you can’t take of her – because here things are reversed.  She’s out there taking care of you.  So you get into bed each night knowing that you’ve sacrificed a part of her innocence and her youth on the altar of your beliefs and ideology, and you wonder, each and every day, if what you once thought was a noble life choice might have been the most unfair thing you ever did.  That, Jay, is more exhausting than I’d ever imagined it would be.

She’s out of the army now.  But her brother’s not.  And there are those days, only once every few months, when I’m either leaving the house in the morning to go to work or coming home at the end of the day, when on the sidewalk outside our building are two IDF officers, and it appears that they’re walking to our entrance.  Then comes that split second moment of breath-stopped horror, the fear that they’re coming to our house, bearing tidings that would be ­wholly unbearable.  It’s only happened three or four times, but it’s enough.  They walk past the building, Jay, barely even nodding to me because they’re in the middle of a conversation, unaware that I’ve even noticed them.  But I’m a mess.  Drenched with sweat.  Shaking slightly.  Knowing that the rest of the day or the evening is going to be a utter waste of time.

And at moments like that, you want to call your kid.  Not for anything in particular; just to tell him that you love him.  That you miss him.  That there really isn’t a moment when you’re not thinking about him, or praying that he’s OK.

But you can’t.  Because he can’t use his phone.  Because he’s busy.  Because he’s out there protecting his parents.  And his brother.  And his sister, who used to protect him.  Simply because when he was a very little boy, we decided we wanted to live here; and now he’s out there, doing this, year after relentless year.  Loving Israel is exhausting, Jay, you’re right.   But really, it’s way more exhausting here than it is over there.

So the real question isn’t whether or not we’re exhausted – lots of us are tired.  (I keep this picture on my desktop for those moments when I feel exhausted … to remind myself that no matter how tired I am, there are people out there (this is not my kid) who are way more exhausted than I am.)  The real question, I think, is not whether we’re exhausted, but rather what we do with our exhaustion.  What makes all the difference is not our fatigue, but what keeps us going when our tank feels empty, when it feels like all that’s left is fumes.

Like you, Jay, I know that I was raised on an image of Israel that doesn’t really exist.  Maybe it never did.  Like you, there were open fields in Jerusalem that I used to love (for you, it was Churshat Ha-Yaraeach) that are now filled by large apartment buildings.  But when we lived in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, our older neighbors used to reminisce about the days when our neighborhood had been all orange groves.  Did they stop loving America because fields got built on?  I didn’t sense that.  When we live in America and watch fields get built up, we sense progress.  But when it’s a field in the Israel of our youth that’s now gone, we feel betrayed.  What’s that about?  Maybe it’s time we all moved beyond puppy love and ventured into something more mature, a sort of love that knows that the object of our love cannot, and should not, remain unchanged year after year, decade after decade.

Like you, Jay, I am concerned about some of the injustices that Israel commits.  But unlike you, I could never be “more relaxed [in Berlin] than in Jerusalem.”  You wrote very compellingly that you felt relieved that though there was political baggage in Berlin, “none of it was mine.”

But you know what I love about this place, Jay?  I love that all the political baggage is mine.  The Palestinians.  The Israeli Arabs.  (Some of) the Haredim.  A collapsing educational system.  Murders on the streets with a constancy we never used to have.  A nation of roads and drivers that kills many more Israelis than our enemies do.  That’s all my baggage.

But living here, my baggage is also the sight of young secular and religious Israelis going from restaurant to restaurant, inspecting not their kashrut, but how they treat their workers, and depending on what they find, giving them a “social kashrut” certificate.  It’s the sight of many hundreds of people coming out to hear Rabbi Benny Lau on the Shabbat afternoon before Yom Kippur in a synagogue that couldn’t begin to accommodate them all, because, they knew, he would be the one guy in the city among all the derashot that afternoon who would tie whatever he was saying to a vision for a different kind of society, and call on them to do something about it.  Living here is about spending a morning on Sukkot, going to the Church in Kiryat Yearim and joining a capacity crowd of Jews and Christians, largely secular but also some people wearing kippot, listening to the choir perform Bach motets on precisely the spot where the Ark of the Covenant once rested.  It’s about the vision of people who, no matter what CNN will tell you, really can live with people who are different from them; it’s about a blending of the ancient past and the complicated present, of setting aside the equivocations of which you write so articulately for a beauty about which you say very little.  Living here is about feeling the pulse of people who still have hope, who desperately want to build something different here, and who would never dream of saying aloud that they’ve given up.

Which is why, Jay, I can’t imagine leaving this place, and angry as I sometimes get, I could never write about losing my love for what we’re building here.  Because I know that this is our last chance, and I know without a shred of doubt that the robust Jewish life that exists everywhere – in Manhattan as well as in Los Angeles, in London no less than in Johannesburg – exists because of Israel.  Two generations ago, Jewish life in America wasn’t the Jewish life that you and I were raised on.  It wasn’t nearly so secure after the war.  And though 1948 made a bit of a difference, the secure and self-confident American Jewish life that you and I take for granted really emerged in 1967, when Jews around the world finally stood tall because they were no longer the objects of history, but were now the shapers of their own destiny.

Would that 1967 war prove to have a very complicated aftermath?  Yes, it would – we’re still trying to figure it out.  But it changed everything, Jay, for me and for you.  For my neighbors and for yours.  I can’t imagine a world in which I’d want to be alive in which this country didn’t exist; which is why I’m constitutionally incapable of saying that I’m losing my love for it.

That’s the real difference between us, Jay, and it’s the reason that your exhaustion leads you where it leads you, and mine leads me to dig in my heels.  You write that as you notice your love starting to wane, you feel a “sadness that accompanies the end of any affair.”

That’s a fascinating metaphor.  Because at the end of an affair, most people put their lives back together by telling themselves that despite the pain of the moment, there will be someone else.  “A lot of fish in the ocean,” we told each other in college when relationships broke up, which was to say, “she’s not the only one out there, and she’s not the last one you’ll love.”

Which may have been true of our youthful relationships back then, but it’s not true of Israel.  This is the only one.  This is the last chance we get.  We lose this, and the Jewish people heads into dark, uncharted territory that I don’t think you or I can begin to imagine.  You yourself wrote that you “still awed by the tkuma, the resurrection and rebirth of my ancient people.”

You’re absolutely right.  This country is the very foundation of the resurrection and rebirth of our ancient people.  Given that, how dare we not love it, even with all its faults?  Is love Israel exhausting?  Of course it is.  Does it require lots of equivocation?  Yes, it does.  Is it very unpopular in lots of circles?  No question.

But it’s bigger than me.  And it’s bigger than you.  It matters more than all of us.  So given that, I don’t think we have a right to exhaustion.  Or, if exhaustion is inevitable, then the only thing I think we have a right to is a few hours of sleep, until we get up the next morning, roll up our sleeves and get to work again.

Because loving Israel isn’t like an affair.  It’s a totally different thing.  In a relationship, the person I love and I both matter – more or less equally, I guess.  But not here.  In this, I don’t matter.  You don’t matter.  Only justice matters.  Only the future matters.  Only the Jewish people’s survival matters.  And without this place, there is no future, no Jewish people.

Given that, what’s the alternative to a deep and abiding love?  I can’t think of one.  So tonight, I’m going to roll up my sleeves and head off to shul.  I’m going to put the news out of my mind, and for a few hours, I’m going to forget about the equivocation, about the fatigue.  I’m going to hold on to my son, the one kid still left at home – and when the singing starts, I’m going to dance.

Shabbat Shalom, Jay, and Chag Same’ach.

Neve Gordon Is Not the Problem

Intentionally or not, Neve Gordon, senior lecturer and head of the Political Science Department at Ben-Gurion University, has unleashed a firestorm in Israeli academe. His recent op-ed in The Los Angeles Times declared that Israel is an apartheid state, and that it ought to be boycotted to “save Israel from itself.”

Sensing a public relations debacle among their American supporters, the president and leadership of BGU distanced themselves from his comments and hinted that he ought to resign. Predictably, other Israeli academics leaped to Gordon’s defense. Most interesting, however, was the outrage Gordon’s column has evoked among many American Jews. Some are so beside themselves that they are now threatening to withhold their financial support from the university.

To be sure, Gordon’s argument is deeply flawed. He writes as if Israel sought or enjoys controlling the Palestinians, making no mention of the fact that it captured the West Bank in a defensive war that it did not seek, or that more than once (most recently with Ehud Olmert’s election in 2006) Israelis have chosen leaders whose campaigns called for relinquishing those territories. Add to that his failure to admit that the Palestinians still refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist and continue to call for its destruction, and one can appreciate the fury of Ben-Gurion University’s American supporters.

The fury these American Jews are suddenly expressing illustrates how little these very supporters know about the system of higher education in Israel to which they are so deeply committed. Is this really their first glimpse into the widespread and long-standing hostility of Israeli academe to Jewish statehood? Gordon has been espousing this viewpoint for years. He regularly writes for anti-Israel publications, holed up with Yasser Arafat during the siege of Ramallah, and has on more than one occasion likened Israel to Nazi Germany. But he’s always enjoyed the steadfast support of the university, to its very highest echelons. His views are widely held among his colleagues.

Nor is BGU unique here. Coming to Gordon’s defense, Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Sand stated outright that Israeli universities are not Zionist institutions and should not be. They are about scholarship, he insisted, not about the Jews or their state.

There are non-Jews and non-Zionists at these universities, he claimed, and the universities must serve them no less than anyone else. And at Hebrew University, the crown jewel of Israeli academe, the long-term influence of the binationalists involved in the university’s founding has also been well documented.

Indeed, the only thing that is surprising about this latest turn of events is that American donors are surprised. For, to those who know even a bit about Israeli academe, the anti-Israel posture of many departments is really yesterday’s news.

The important question in all this is what American philanthropists who are committed to Zionism and to Israel’s higher education ought to do. Surely they can’t really believe that universities will suddenly silence their professors or terminate tenure. What, then, are the options?

These philanthropists ought to look close to home for their answers. For many of America’s great universities developed from an entirely different tradition. Woodrow Wilson, as president of Princeton, spoke unabashedly of “Princeton in the nation’s service.” Columbia College instituted its now-classic core curriculum as an explicit defense of Western civilization. Neither Princeton nor Columbia, like many other great American liberal arts colleges, saw any conflict between superb scholarship and inclusiveness on the one hand, and devotion to country and one’s own civilization on the other.

Is it at all surprising that these colleges have produced an abundance of America’s great leaders?

Israeli education needs more support from American Jews, not less. Rather than withholding their funds, a much more useful response would be to channel their support and their knowledge to create an Israeli version of the “college in the service of the nation.”

How?

Those American philanthropists currently wringing their hands probably have no idea that Israel has not a single liberal arts college to its name. Typical Israeli undergraduates get none of the curricular breadth that an American education usually requires, and as a result, they know almost nothing about Western civilization, the majesty of Jewish intellectual history or even the competing philosophic currents inside Zionism.

In today’s Israel, the People of the Book do not even read their own books. When they read or hear someone like Neve Gordon, nothing in their education has given them the tools to evaluate what he says, or to take him on. They are helpless.

TODAY’S NARROW model of education, in which students essentially study only one discipline, produces excellence, but excellence as technocrats. It does not produce the broadly read, intellectually nuanced people that the Jewish state so desperately needs.

Without dramatic change, Israeli universities will produce only more Neve Gordon’s – scholars of varying quality, who feel no love for the very country that has saved their people. If it learned from American education, Israel might actually begin to cultivate a new wave of leadership, and with it, a generation of Israelis who actually love their nation.

Dr. Gordon is correct – Israel needs to be saved from itself. What Israel needs now is a reconceived notion of the educated Israeli.

It needs a liberal arts college, and the young people prepared to speak constructively about Jewish sovereignty, its challenges, its failures and its future that only that kind of college can produce.

A century ago, who could have imagined that the Jewish state would one day have a world-class army but a failing, collapsing educational system? Whether or not American Jews have the foresight to use their philanthropy to promote genuine change in Israeli academe still remains to be seen. But if they do, Neve Gordon’s op-ed may ironically have goaded both Israel and the American Jewish community into taking the first steps needed to begin to save the Jewish state.